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The  Poet  of  Galil 


liam  Ellerv  Leonard 


GIFT  OF 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE; 


THE 
POET  OF  GALILEE 


BY 

WILLIAM  ELLERY  LEONARD,  Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OP  ENGLISH  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 

WISCONSIN.     AUTHOR  OF  "  SONNETS  AND  POEMS," 

"THE  FRAGMENTS  OF  EMPEDOCLES,"  ETC 


'Who  do  men  say  that  I  am?/ 


NEW  YORK 
B.  W.   HUEBSCH 

1909 


Copyright,  1909,  by       1 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


PRINTED  IN  TT.  S.  A. 


PATRI 

NAZARENI  DISCIPULO 

HUNC  LIBELLUM  DONAT 

FILIUS 


FOREWORD 

The  following  pages,  written  during 
vacation  weather  three  summers  ago  in 
a  sequestered  village  of  New  England, 
apart  from  libraries  and  scholars,  under 
shade  trees  overlooking  meadow  and  hill- 
side, and  thereafter  reconsidered  and  re- 
vised by  the  inland  lakes  of  this  beautiful 
Academic  City,  are  sincerely  and  humbly 
offered  to  any  reader  who,  realizing  that 
the  subject  is  one  that  needs  detachment 
of  mind  and  the  argument  one  that  must 
be  briefly  suggestive  rather  than  logically 
complete,  has  his  own  quiet  hours  and  a 
willingness  to  do  himself  a  share  of  the 
thinking. 

WILLIAM  ELLERY  LEONARD. 

Madison,  Wisconsin,  April  7, 1909. 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 
I. 

Gods  of  the  south  and  the  north, 

Gods  of  the  east  and  the  west, 

Ye  that  arise  and  come  forth 

On  the  good  quest — 

Out  of  a  wonderful  place, 

Out  of  the  pregnant  gloom, 

Out  of  the  soul  of  the  race, 

Out  of  humanity's  womb, 

Fed  on  humanity's  breast, 

On  the  stars  and  the  sea, 

Treading  unsoiled  the  Augean 

World  and  its  primitive  slime  that  so 

often  befouls  such  as  we, 
Cleansers  with  lyric  and  paean: 
Praise  be  to  all!  but  to  thee, 
Praise  above  praise,  Galilean !     .     .     . 
Even  from  me. 

II. 

Gods  of  the  coasts  and  the  isles, 
Gods  of  the  hill  and  the  plain, 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Who  with  your  beautiful  smiles 

Come  not  in  vain —  j 

Out  of  a  wonderful  place, 

Out  of  the  smoke  and  the  fire, 

Out  of  the  soul  of  the  race, 

Out  of  its  upward  desire, 

Nurtured  with  pleasure  and  pain, 

With  the  rock  and  the  tree, 

Loosening  us  from  the  Circean 

Drink  and  the  cloven-hoofed  beast  that 

too  often  degrades  such  as  we, 
Restorers  through  song  empyrean: 
Praise  be  to  all! — but  to  thee, 
Praise  above  praise,  Galilean!     .     .    • 
Even  from  me. 


III. 

Gods,  O  our  cleansers,  restorers, 

Coming  as  lovers  to  greet, 

Of  the  wine  for  our  lips  the  outpourers, 

Of  the  waters  for  hands  and  for  feet! 

When  our  knees  to  the  sly  Cytherean 

Were  bowed  in  libidinous  rite, 

When  our  eyes  with  the  tears  Niobean 

Were  wet  on  a  desolate  night, 

When  we  craved  the  ignoble  Lethean 

Banks  for  our  sin  or  our  grief, 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Then  ye  came! — and  O  thou,  Galilean, 

Camest  the  swiftest  and  chief. 

And  ye  kindled  the  radiant  fountains 

Of  flame,  like  a  swift  borealis, 

In  the  Mediterranean  mountains, 

On  the  Mexican's  grim  teocallis; 

And  they  who  were  near,  by  your  high  light 

Saw  upon  earth  a  new  stream, 

Where  golden  cities  your  sky  light 

Returned,  beam  for  beam 

(Even  I,  who  was  far,  in  your  twilight 

Dreamed  a  new  dream). 

And  ever  the  vision  of  fire 

Gendered  new  fire  in  men 

(As  the  sudden  song  of  a  lyre 

Wakes  us  to  singing  again) — 

O  ye  that  reveal  and  inspire: 

Praise  and  amen! — 

But  io!  and  praise  hymenean 

And  palms,  dewy-fresh  and  unfurled, 

At  sunrise  to  thee,  Galilean, 

Light  of  the  world! 

IV. 

Gods,  because  more  than  all  others, 
Gods,  because  men  at  man's  worth, 
Ye,  both  our  masters  and  brothers, 
Poets  of  earth! 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Out  of  a  wonderful  place, 
Out  of  the  ancient  Design,    j 
Out  of  the  soul  of  the  race, 
Out  of  the  nameless  Divine, 
Fed  on  the  past  and  its  dearth, 
Fed  on  the  fulness  to  be, 
Whether  from  Ind,  or  Aegean, 
Jordan,  or  Tiber,  or  waters  that  flow 

through  our  land  to  the  sea, 
Saviors  from  aeon  to  aeon: 
Praise  be  to  all ! — but  to  thee, 
Praise  above  praise,  Galilean!     •    «     . 
Even  from  me. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 3 

THE  OBSERVER .      .      19 

THE  LOVER S3 

THE  SEER      .............     39 

THE  INSPIRED      ...........     67 

THE  MAN  OF  SORROWS  .........     75 

THE  SCOURGER    .      ......      ...     81 

THE  HUMORIST   .      ......      ,      ,      .      .87 

THE  ALERT    ....      ...»*»•      .103 

THE  STORY-TELLER  ..     ....      .      ,      .      .115 

THE  SAYER    .      .     .. .     .,     « 135 

A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE  ^     «     *     .     .      .     .151 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

INTRODUCTION 


44T  If  THO  do  men  say  that  I  am?" 
y  y     once  asked  the  Man  of  Naza- 
reth ;  and  the  question  has  per- 
haps never  interested  the  race  more  than 
it  does  today. 

The  offspring  of  humble  parents 
among  the  Hebrews  of  ancient  Galilee, 
he  grew  up  in  an  age  of  religious  formal- 
ism and  political  oppression,  until,  fired 
by  the  words  of  prophet  and  psalmist, 
by  the  sturdy  example  of  an  earnest  and 
gloomy  fellow-countryman,  by  his  own 
profound  insight  into  the  universal  soul 
of  Man,  the  brother,  and  God,  the  father, 
he  arose  to  tell  of  the  Kingdom  of 
[3] 


;, THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 


Heaven,  first  among  his  peasant  neigh- 
bors on  the  mountains  and  fty  the  waters 
of  the  north,  afterwards  among  the  priests 
in  the  very  temple  at  Jerusalem  itself,  to 
suffer  at  last  the  penalty  of  his  inde- 
pendent thought,  reviled  as  a  seditious 
upstart  by  those  who  guarded  his  coun- 
try's altar,  crucified  by  foreign  soldiers, 
and  deserted  by  the  members  of  the  little 
cult  that  had  followed  and  loved  him. 

Yet  to  call  him  the  martyred  teacher 
and  reformer,  though  an  important  ser- 
vice of  historical  criticism,  is  but  to  define 
his  relation  to  society,  not  his  essential 
individuality.  And  to  bring  him  before 
us  as  he  moved  about  on  earth — his  cheek 
tanned  by  the  mountain  air  and  sun;  his 
feet  dusty  with  the  highways  of  Samaria; 
his  lips  passing  the  time  of  day  with 
neighbors  in  Capernaum  or  acquaintances 
about  Jerusalem;  his  soul  sometimes  cast 
down  by  doubt  or  disappointment;  his 
feelings  annoyed  by  importunities  of  dis- 
ciples or  impertinence  of  Scribe  and 
[4] 


INTRODUCTION 

Pharisee — though  an  important  service  of 
the  historic  imagination,  is  to  relate  him, 
after  all,  only  to  the  flesh  and  blood,  the 
heart  and  soul  of  humanity  at  large:  his 
essential  individuality  remains  as  obscure 
as  ever. 

But  we  have,  of  course,  the  means  for  a 
more  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  indi- 
vidual mind  of  Jesus.  There  was  a 
speaking  Voice  on  the  Galilean  shores  in 
the  days  of  old:  that  we  all  know. 
Friendly  ears  heard,  and  friendly  tongues 
repeated  its  words;  and  at  last  friendly 
hands  wrote  some  of  them  down,  preserv- 
ing them,  just  as  other  disciples  preserved 
the  sentences  of  Hillel  and  the  Rabbis 
which  we  read  in  the  Talmud.  Those 
words  are  few,  a  mere  handful  of  frag- 
ments; and  the  scholar  may  ransack  the 
sandpits  of  Aegypt  long  years  in  a  vain 
quest  for  scroll  or  palimpsest  containing 
the  least  authentic  addition.  Yet  they  are 
alive  with  divine  breath,  melodious  wit- 
ness of  one  man's  singular  genius  for  high 
[5] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

things.  From  them  we  may  not  be  able 
to  restore  the  outline  of  a  *  system  of 
thought,  as  we  have  restored,  from  the 
fragments  cited  by  the  doxographers, 
something  of  the  philosophic  systems  of 
Heraclitus  and  Empedocles;  from  them 
still  less  can  we  restore  any  such  formal 
wholes  of  consecutive  discourse  as  have 
come  down  to  us  from  Ezekiel  and  the 
Second  Isaiah;  from  them  least  of  all  can 
we  restore,  as  from  the  words  of  Horace 
or  Cicero,  a  biography  of  external  facts; 
but  they  do  furnish  us  the  data  wherewith 
to  restore  a  life. 

For  that  restoration,  however,  neither 
theological  nor  ethical  exegesis,  nor  indeed 
any  study  devoted  exclusively  to  the  ideas 
in  his  utterances  is  sufficient.  Critics  have 
not  generally  been  so  one-sided  in  the 
study  of  other  masters  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression. The  critic  of  Socrates,  though 
he  may  expound  the  sage's  practical  max- 
ims and  spiritual  principles,  aims  above 
all  at  an  interpretation  of  a  great  soul, 
[6] 


INTRODUCTION 

its  bias  and  gifts,  as  deducible  from  its 
words.  Not  any  one  who  would  compre- 
hend Dante  stops  with  the  intellectual 
analysis  of  the  scholastic  philosophy,  ethi- 
cal precepts,  or  political  allegory  in  his 
book;  but  the  words  of  Dante  lead  the 
student  home  to  the  unique  temper  and 
talents  of  a  great  soul.  The  student  of 
Jesus  should  have  no  less  an  incentive  to 
examine  bias  and  gifts,  temper  and  tal- 
ents, implicit  in  the  sayings  and  stories  of 
a  soul  more  momentous  than  Socrates  or 
than  Dante. 

Then  may  come  a  new  answer,  or  new 
answers,  to  the  ancient  query  "Who  do 
men  say  that  I  am?"  Be  it  remembered 
that  every  mind  has  a  right  to  its  own  an- 
swer, and  mine  replies  with  a  fresh  joy 
that  is  not  shamed  by  the  presence  of  a 
learned  and  venerable  host  of  schoolmen 
and  devotees:  "More  than  all  else,  to 
one  among  men,  thou  seemest  the  poet, 
and  I  shall  call  thee  the  Poet  of  the 
Galilean  Lake."  In  the  sunlight  of  that 

m 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

conception  my  thoughts  of  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth flower  best.  Perhaps  that  concep- 
tion may  be  not  without  meaning  for 
others. 

II 

But  enthusiasm  cannot  dispense  witH 
the  results  of  critical  scholarship.  Jesus 
is  known  to  us  only  through  four  brief 
biographies,  uncertain  in  provenience  and 
date.  Not  everything  in  the  records  can 
be  accepted  without  question.  Even  if 
the  miraculous  elements  be  eliminated, 
there  still  remain  important  difficulties. 
The  case  is  not  parallel  to  that  of  the  docu- 
ment with  which  Jesus'  biographies  are 
oftenest  compared.  The  Memorabilia  of 
Socrates  purport  to  have  been  written  by 
a  friend  and  pupil,  otherwise  famous  as 
author,  soldier,  and  man  of  affairs,  who 
lived  in  that  civic  center  of  intellectual 
life,  the  age-long  synonym  for  enlighten- 
ment and  culture.  The  work  contains  no 
contradictions  that  impugn  its  unity  of 
[8] 


INTRODUCTION 

authorship,  no  tendencies  that  betray  any 
purpose  save  to  tell  honestly  the  thought, 
and  to  defend  zealously  the  memory  and 
fame  of  a  beloved  teacher  and  a  good 


man.1 


But  the  Gospels  were  not  written  in 
the  clear  light  of  an  intellectual  day  whose 
sun  yet  shines  across  centuries  and  conti- 
nents and  seas ;  and  the  spirit  of  truth  can- 
not but  point  out  how,  quite  apart  from 
the  legendary  growths  of  fifty  or  seventy 
years,  the  "Memorabilia"  of  Jesus  are 
sometimes  open  to  query  in  what  they  re- 
port both  of  act  and  of  speech.  We  must 
grant  that  no  one  event  can  have  had 
birth  in  one  place  at  one  time  in  more  than 
one  form.  Moreover,  it  is  obvious  that 
one  or  another  of  Jesus'  biographers  had 
a  particular  purpose  in  view,  honorable 
enough  according  to  his  lights,  but  detri- 
mental to  his  historic  sense.  Matthew,  in- 


i  The  author  is  aware  that  some  recent  German  crit- 
icism denies  the  ingenuousness  of  Xenophon« 

[9] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

deed,  in  his  eagerness  to  show  the  Galilean 
as  the  Messiah  promised  by  tfce  Old  Tes- 
tament prophets,  makes  Jesus  perform 
the  unlikely  feat  of  riding  into  Jerusa- 
lem on  an  ass  and  the  colt  of  an  ass,  thus 
missing  entirely  the  parallelism  in  the  an- 
cient poetry.  We  know  too  that  the  early 
Christian  communities  had  their  several 
ideas  influencing  this  way  or  that  the  tra- 
ditions which  were  growing  up  about  the 
Master.  Again  scholars  have  traced  in  the 
Gospel  narratives  the  influence  of  books 
concerning  the  signs  of  the  times  and  the 
import  of  Jesus.  There  is  an  apocalypse 
embedded  in  the  Synoptics,  manifestly  oc- 
casioned by  the  fall  of  Jerusalem;  and 
Jesus  is  made  to  quote  (in  Luke  XI,  49) 
one  book  by  name,  the  "Wisdom  of  God," 
written  about  the  time  of  Domitian  (81- 
96  A.  D.),  words  from  which  are  appar- 
ently put  into  his  mouth  also  in  Matthew 
XXIII,  37.  And  John,  with  its  meta- 
physics derived  from  Philo  and  the  gnos- 
tics, yields  us  (however  beautiful  it  be 
[10] 


INTRODUCTION 

as  a  composition  and  interesting  as  early 
Christian  thought)  no  records  of  the 
earth-born  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  ex- 
cept perhaps  a  few  pregnant  sayings  re- 
flecting the  mysticism  of  Jesus,  and  the 
passage  in  chapter  VIII,  usually  brack- 
eted as  spurious,  but  possibly  from  the 
lost  Gospel  According  to  the  Hebrews,  of 
which  we  have  a  few  quotations  in  Jerome. 
Finally,  Jesus  spoke  Aramaic,  and  in 
some  brief  but  crucial  phrases  the  Greek 
may  misrepresent  him,  a  possibility  bril- 
liantly illustrated  by  Schmidt's  chapter  on 
"The  Son  of  Man,"  in  The  Prophet  o£ 
Nazareth. 

Yet,  although  the  critical  conscience 
must  in  these  pages  pass  over  those  utter- 
ances certainly  never  delivered  by  the  his- 
toric Jesus,  and  although  it  will  do  best 
to  pass  over  those  on  which  there  is  any; 
doubt,  the  vital  things  are  still  ours:  the 
deepest  apothegms,  the  shrewdest  replies, 
the  loveliest  of  the  parables.  It  is  a  fact 
of  the  greatest  significance  that  the  in- 
[11] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

sight  of  a  sympathetic  genius  like  Emer- 
son or  Tolstoi,  and  the  results  df  philolog- 
ical investigation  of  scientists  like  Well- 
hausen  and  Schmidt,  are  in  practical 
agreement:  they  both  discard  the  same 
legends  and  the  same  imputed  ideas  and 
expressions;  and  they  both  assure  us  of 
the  same  indisputable  soul.  These  pages 
are  concerned  only  with  what  after  long 
study  and  reflection  I  have  come  to  be- 
lieve to  be  the  authentic  pronouncements 
of  this  soul. 

Ill 

And  when  it  is  said  that  this  soul  found 
its  expression  in  poetry,  we  should  need 
no  reminder  that  poetry  consists  not  in 
strophe,  or  metre,  or  rhyme,  wonderful 
devices  and  adornments  of  the  imagina- 
tion though  they  may  be.  Without  an 
attempt  formally  to  define  meanings  or 
logically  to  limit  the  scope  of  the  discus- 
sion in  subsequent  chapters,  we  may  well 
recall  that  poetry,  at  least  as  soon  as  it 
[12] 


INTRODUCTION 

becomes  something  more  than  mere  tu- 
mult in  the  blood,  implies  insight  into  the 
realities  of  the  spirit,  the  sympathetic  vis- 
ion which  seems  at  times  almost  to  pene- 
trate the  mysteries  of  life  and  of  nature 
— passions  and  desires  of  men  and  women, 
grass  and  flowers  beneath  our  too  often 
heedless  feet,  moon  and  stars  over  our  un- 
uplifted  heads.  It  implies  again  that  ex- 
altation which,  according  to  an  inviolable 
law,  forever  accompanies  the  vision;  and 
finally  it  implies  the  nobler  speech,  which 
in  the  elect  of  Apollo  transmits  the  vision 
and  the  exaltation  to  all  who  having  eyes 
can  see,  and  having  ears  can  hear  and  un- 
derstand. Poetry  is  vision,  exaltation, 
speech;  and  with  Jesus  it  was  vision,  ex- 
altation, speech,  touching  the  City  of  God. 

IV 

This  poetry  of  Jesus  is  conventionally 
bound  up  in  a  few  pages  near  the  close  of 
a  vast  book.     The  poetry  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament is  universally  recognized.     Shel- 
[13] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

ley  and  his  gifted  companion  would  read 
the  Prophets  together  in  their  Italian 
nights  as  they  read  .ZEschylus  and  Shake- 
speare ;  the  sonorous  passages  in  the  royal 
succession  of  English  divines  were  born  of 
the  Old  Testament,  and  the  Miltonic  is 
the  Hebraic  of  the  old  dispensation.  In 
the  Jewish  Scriptures  we  find  the  lyric  of 
personal  joy  or  grief,  gnomic  wisdom  of 
intimate  experience,  a  lyrical  drama,  a 
collection  of  love  songs,  plangent  elegies 
on  cities  and  human  life,  and  a  sublime 
and  gorgeous  oratory  never  equaled  in  the 
senates  of  the  world.  The  work  of  di- 
vers men  in  divers  ages,  the  Old  Testa- 
ment celebrates  the  moral  law  in  individ- 
uals and  in  nations ;  the  mystery  of  afflic- 
tion, the  beauty  of  holiness,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  great  and  the  proud,  the 
devotion  of  lovers,  the  loyalty  of  friends. 
It  gives  broad  surveys  of  the  activities  of 
field  and  city,  and  vivid  descriptions  of  the 
phenomena  of  nature — -the  fire,  the  thun- 
der, the  whirlwind,  the  sandstorm,  the 


INTRODUCTION 

locust  pest,  the  grass,  the  green  pasture 
and  the  rivers  of  waters.  It  has  infinite 
grandeur,  infinite  passion,  infinite  tender- 
ness, whilst  its  imagery  ranges  from  the 
vaguest  atmospheric  something,  terrible 
and  unnamed,  to  the  homely,  concrete 
metaphors  of  the  potter  and  his  wheel,  the 
sour  grapes  and  the  children's  teeth  set 
on  edge. 

If  one  approaches  our  topic  from  a 
reading  of  the  Old  Testament,  let  him  bear 
in  mind  that  we  have  there  many  works 
of  a  great  literature,  as  here  against  a  few 
words  of  a  great  man,  and  that  its  oriental 
blaze  and  prodigality  of  power,  though 
more  striking,  is  not  therefore  more  beau- 
tiful than  the  reserve  and  simplicity  of 
Jesus. 

And  let  us  never  forget  that  the  con- 
summate charm  of  the  Gospels,  which 
sooner  or  later  wins  us  all,  conies  primar- 
ily1 from  the  words  of  Jesus  himself,  not 


i  Primarily,  not  exclusively:  see  last  chapter,  "A  Hero 
of  Folk-lore." 

[15] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

from  the  compilers  who  quote  them. 
"Matthew/'  "Mark,"  and  "Luke,"  with 
chapter  and  verse,  are  ingrained  habits  of 
speech;  but  these  names  must  not  stand 
between  us  and  reality,  between  our  gaze 
and  the  Poet  himself. 


[16] 


THE  OBSERVER 


THE  OBSERVER 

WE  are  prone  to  take  the  familiar 
as  a  matter  of  course.  The  uni- 
versal mechanical  devices  of  the 
race, — the  wheel,  the  lever,  the  screw,  its 
universal  cultural  devices, — the  alphabet, 
numerical  notation,  the  calendar — are  so 
familiar  that  they;  seem  practically  one 
with  organic  nature  about  us,  with  the  ac- 
tivities of  plant,  stream,  and  moon.  A 
proverb  long  familiar  seems  itself  like  a 
primitive  unit  of  our  language;  and  the 
sayings  of  Jesus,  even  when  their  mean- 
ings are  but  half  divined,  are  part  of  our 
ethical  and  religious  consciousness,  as  if 
one  with  the  law  that  leads  us  to  worship 
and  the  law  that  leads  us  to  desire  the 
Good.  When  thought  has  come  thus  to 
deal  with  its  objects,  it  gives  best  proof 
[19] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

of  their  fitness  to  human  needs:  but  it 
also  makes  difficult  an  appreciation  of 
their  real  character.  The  wheel  and  the 
alphabet  are  the  products  of  age-long  ex- 
periments by  our  fellow-men ;  the  proverbs 
of  the  race  and  the  sayings  of  Jesus  came 
out  of  concrete  experience  not  generic- 
ally  unlike  our  own. 

Coming  at  the  Master's  words  from  this 
starting  point,  what  must  strike  us  first  is 
their  testimony  to  his  wide  observation. 
Jesus  saw  the  world  about  him  with  an 
alertness  and  impressionability  without 
which  all  prayers  to  the  muses  are  vain: 
he  had  first  the  physical  senses  of  the 
poet. 

The  light  shone  clear  over  the  hills  be- 
hind Nazareth;  northward  it  shone  to  the 
snows  of  Hermon,  westward  to  the  silver 
line  that  was  the  border  of  the  midland 
sea,  southward  across  the  plains  and  vil- 
lages of  Galilee  on  toward  the  heights  of 
Samaria,  and  eastward  down  to  the  broad 
[20] 


THE  OBSERVER 

blue  breast  of  waters,  the  waters  of  Tiber- 
ias crowned  with  synagogues  and  cities. 
Sharp  and  bold  the  cliffs  and  the  trees 
and  houses  and  shadows  stood  out  in  the 
Galilean  air;  and  man  plied  his  task,  and 
sang  his  song  in  the  open.  A  lovely 
home  it  was  for  one  with  eyes  to  see. 

And  the  same  blue  light  lay  over  the 
Mount  of  Olives  and  the  white  towers  of 
the  city  to  which  the  Galilean  came  at  last, 
and  over  all  the  hill  country  of  Judea, 
down  to  the  Mediterranean  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  Dead  Sea  and  the  wall  of  Moab 
on  the  other;  and  it  played  among  the 
thick  trees  and  shrubs  of  the  Jordan, 
among  the  tamarisks,  acacias,  silver  pop- 
lars, terebinths,  cedars,  and  arbutus,  and 
among  the  long  grasses  where  caroled  and 
flew  so  many  birds — sparrows,  cliff -swal- 
lows, turtle-doves,  and  nightingales:  a 
catalogue  of  beautiful  things  of  which 
the  very  names  are  poetry.  And  over  all, 
north  and  south,  in  the  wide  homes  of 
[21] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

night  burned  the  clear  stars,  nowhere  in 
those  days  shut  away  fromi  man  bjr  the 
pestilential  smoke. 

What  did  the  Galilean  Poet  see  in  the 
holy  land  of  his  fathers?  He  saw  the 
mountain,  the  crag  where  bleats  the  lost 
sheep;  the  lilies  of  the  field;  the  peasant's 
plot  of  waving  grain,  with  sometimes  the 
tares  scattered  through  it;  the  reeds  in 
the  river  shaken  by  the  wind;  the  rock  and 
the  sand  by  the  dry  stream  on  which  men, 
for  good  or  ill,  build  their  houses;  the 
sparrow  that  falls  to  the  ground;  the 
moth,  and  the  rust,  and  the  gnat  floating 
in  the  wine ;  the  red  evening  sky  that  low- 
ers; and  the  rain  that  falls  on  the  just  and 
the  unjust.  He  watched  the  ancient  pro- 
cess :  behold  the  fig  tree  and  all  the  trees — 
where  they  now  shoot  forth;  ye  see  it  and 
know  of  your  own  selves  that  the  summer 
is  nigh  .  .  .  the  seeds  spring  up  and 
grow,  man  knoweth  not  how  .  .  .  the 
earth  beareth  fruit  of  herself,  first  the 
blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in 
[22] 


THE  OBSERVER 

the  ear  .  .  .  and  the  cloud  rising  in 
the  west  presages  the  shower,  and  the 
south  wind  blowing  the  heat,  and  it  com- 
eth  to  pass. 

And  toward  nature,  as  toward  all  things 
deep  and  fair,  his  spirit  went  out  with  an 
affectionate  tenderness,  so  simple  and 
genuine  and  waking  a  kindred  emotion  so 
immediately  in  our  own  hearts  that  we 
are  scarcely  aware  of  it  as  being  a  dis- 
tinctive element  in  Jesus'  attitude  to  crea- 
tion, until  we  meet  with  some  jarring 
anecdote,  like  the  cursing  of  the  fig-tree, 
the  contradictory  harshness  of  which 
brings  us  to  a  sudden  realization  that  his 
song  of  nature  has  in  other  passages  been 
kindlier  than  we  marked.  Herein  is  the 
disharmony  and  difficulty  of  the  anecdote 
of  the  fig-tree,  the  meaning  or  the  au- 
thenticity of  which  has  been  so  often  de- 
bated: it  violates  Jesus'  attitude  to 
creation.  This  fact  alone  would  cast 
doubt  on  its  historicity,  did  it  not  also 
plainly  enough  suggest  the  necromancy 
[23] 


.THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

common  to  that  class  of  legends  referred 
to  below  as  characteristic  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament Apocrypha,,  albeit  its  more  spirit- 
ual connotations  relate  it  to  the  Synoptic 
class.1  Over  the  works  of  nature  Jesus 
pronounced  his  benedictions,  not  a  curse. 
He  was  never  her  enemy; ;  he  was  always 
her  friend. 

But  he  was  a  friend  of  nature,  not  like 
some  poet  who  loves  her  for  a  philosophy 
which  she  whispers,  nor  like  one  who  loves 
her  for  a  refuge,  nor  like  one  who  loves 
her  for  her  picturesqueness  and  soft  odors ; 
nor  could  he  have  been  touched  with  that 
cosmic  emotion  which  is  the  response  of 
the  imagination  to  modern  science ;  nor  yet 
was  he  awed  or  exultant  in  her  presence, 
like  Mohammed  or  many  a  prophet  or 
psalmist  who  saw  in  her  the  mighty  ener- 
gies of  the  Creator.  Doubtless  he  con- 
ceived nature  as  God's  work,  beautiful  or 
terrible;  doubtless  he  felt  her  peace  and 


i  See  last  chapter,  "A  Hero  of  Folk-lore." 
[24] 


THE  OBSERVER 

charm,  which  we  quite  unnecessarily  as- 
sume to  be  the  reaction  of  modern  sensi- 
bility; but  his  attitude  when  he  spoke  was 
more  akin  to  that  affirmed  of  the  sophisti- 
cated Greek  poets  after  the  ages  of  myth 
had  passed  away,  and  nature  appears,  in 
the  record  he  has  left  us,  as  subordinated 
to  man,  as  the  background  or  the  illustra- 
tion of  man's  life  and  labors. 

He  knew  the  day's  work.  His  stories 
reflect  the  diversified  activities  and  cus- 
toms of  his  people:  tillage,  vine-growing, 
shepherding,  fishing,  baking,  mending, 
sweeping,  affairs  of  money  and  civil  law. 
He  saw  on  the  caravan  along  the  road  that 
passed  through  Nazareth  the  merchant 
and  his  pearl  of  great  price,  and  the  rich 
apparel  to  be  worn  by  those  who  dwelt  in 
kings'  houses;  he  saw  the  plowman  that 
did  not  look  back  but  kept  his  eye  on  the 
share  and  the  turning  glebe  ahead,  the 
sower  that  went  forth  to  sow,  the  peasant 
that  put  forth  the  sickle  because  the  har- 
vest was  come,  the  shepherd  entering  the 
[25] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

fold,  the  swineherd  with  his  charge  tramp- 
ling and  groveling  in  the  mirq,  the  fisher- 
men drying  their  nets  in  the  boat,  the  vine- 
dresser who  built  his  vineyard  with  press 
and  hedge  and  tower,  and  got  him  new 
wine-skins  for  new  wine, — though  oddly- 
enough  Jesus  never  refers  to  the  carpen- 
ter's trade  in  his  own  household.  He  saw, 
too,  the  woman  who  trimmed  her  lamp 
and  set  it  on  the  bushel,  or  put  the  leaven 
in  the  three  measures  of  meal,  the  man 
who  sewed  a  patch  of  dressed  cloth  on  a 
rent  garment,  the  scribe  and  his  roll  with 
the  Hebrew  jot  and  tittle  in  big  black 
letters,  and  the  physician,  and  the  taker  of 
toll  at  the  gate. 

He  saw  the  joy-makers:  the  bride  and 
the  bridegroom  at  festival  or  meal,  the 
children  playing  in  the  market-place,  the 
father  that  killed  the  fatted  calf  and  got 
out  the  ring  and  the  robe,  the  householder 
who  gave  the  thirsty  wayfarer  a  cup  of 
Nazareth's  cold  water. 

The  foolish,  the  sinful,  and  the  weak 
[26] 


THE  OBSERVER 

he  saw  also:  the  virgin  who  forgot  her 
oil,1  the  selfish  rich  man,  the  thief  in  the 
night  who  crawled  over  the  wall  of  the 
pinfold  or  into  the  house  of  the  strong 
man,  the  harlots  in  alley  or  portico,  cut- 
throats with  their  knives,  and  unjust  stew- 
ards that  tinkered  with  their  masters'  ac- 
counts, riotous  young  spendthrifts,  and 
the  hypocrites  who  made  long  prayers  and 
got  the  chief  seats  in  the  synagogues  and 
white-washed  the  sepulchres  in  the  month 
Adar  and  garnished  the  tombs  of  the 
prophets  whom  their  fathers  slew. 

We  need  not  Josephus  to  tell  us  that 
Galilee  was  a  busy  world  in  those  days, 
fertile  of  soil,  teeming  with  populous  vil- 
lages on  lake  shore  and  mountain  side, 
intersected  with  highways  along  which 
came  alike  Hebrew  pilgrim,  Roman  sol- 
dier, or  Syrian  caravaneer ;  and  here  Jesus 
accumulated  an  experience  that  never 
failed  him. 


i  Obviously  these  references  to  his  inventions  are  not 
cited  as  literal  examples. 

[27] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Doubtless  all  these  things  passed  before 
the  eyes  of  his  friends  and  countrymen; 
doubtless  we  would  have  seen  them  too 
had  we  been  there.  But  we  do  not  realize 
how  deeply  what  strikes  the  senses  must  be 
absorbed  ere  it  can  become  material  of  elo- 
quence or  poetry,  and  how  much  energy 
that  absorption  implies.  Jesus  could  not 
have  put  so  much  of  the  world  into  his 
discourse  had  his  mind  not  been  plenished 
with  the  world:  his  words  have  the  abun- 
dance of  life  in  a  literal  no  less  than  in 
a  spiritual  sense;  and  his  gaze  into  the 
unseen  was  no  more  alert  than  his  gaze 
at  the  seen. 

So  the  author  of  the  Odyssey,  must  have 
watched — we  know  not  when — among  the 
sea- faring  folk  of  Asia  Minor  where  the 
ships  were  set  to  west  and  the  daughters 
of  the  isles  washed  their  garments  on  the 
beach;  so  Dante  observed,  going  about 
among  the  light-hearted  or  evil-eyed  Flor- 
entines or  in  the  gloom  of  wooded  Fiesole ; 
so  Shakespeare  won  his  precious  material 
[28] 


THE  OBSERVER 

in  the  fields  of  Warwickshire  or  in  the 
London  taverns;  and  so  Goethe  from  the 
lanes  and  meadows  of  Frankfort,  from 
the  kellers  of  Leipzig,  from  the  salons  of 
Weimar,  from  Rome  and  her  ruin,  created 
that  world — 

"Die  kleine,  dann  die  grosse  Welt"  * — 

we  know  as  Faust. 

Here  Jesus  is  supreme  among  the  re- 
ligious geniuses  of  the  world.  Not 
Buddha  with  his  sublime  austerities;  not 
Zoroaster,  who  sang  the  Goddess  of  Wa- 
ters, having 

"A  golden  crown  with  hundred  silver  stars, 

And    eight    sharp    rays    ascending    at    the    front 

.     .     .     clothed 
With  skins  of  beavers"; 

not  Mohammed,  with  his  praise  of  him 
"who  hath  made  the  sun  for  shining  and 
the  moon  for  light  and  ordained  him  man- 
sions that  ye  may  learn  the  number  of  the 


i  "The  little,  then  the  larger  world." 

[29] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

years  and  the  reckoning  of  time,"  with 
his  rich  imagery  from  earth —  1 

"Prepared  for  living  things, 

Therein  is  fruit  and  the  palm  with  sheaths 

And  grain  with  its  husk  and  the  fragrant  herb" — 

with  his  lyric  sensuousness  of  color  and 
perfume  and 

"Gardens     .     .     . 

Dark  green  in  hue 
With  gushing  wells  therein"     .     •    • 

and 

"The  shy-eyed  maidens  neither  man  nor  Jinn 
Hath  touched  before," 

had  Jesus'  familiarity  with  the  concrete 
and  visible  universe,  with  all  that  stands 
or  passes  before  men's  eyes.  Nor  will  one 
find  it  in  the  Rabbinical  tales  or  discus- 
sions of  the  Talmud,  nor  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament Epistles;  nor  in  the  moralists 
either :  not  in  Socrates,  with  all  his  homely 
illustrations,  not  in  Plato,  dramatic  artist 
and  psychologist  though  he  was,  nor  in 
Epictetus,  nor  in  Aurelius. 
[30] 


THE  LOVER 


THE  LOVER 

BUT  the  power  of  the  poets  to  see 
and  remember  depends  profoundly 
upon  the  degree  of  their  sympa- 
thy. They  enter  into  the  House  of  Life 
as  the  friend  of  Life,  even  though  in  the 
end  often  cruelly  deceived  and  repulsed. 
Only  thus  can  the  words  they  would  speak 
have  universality  and  pith;  only  thus  can 
they  become  mediators,  interpreters,  an- 
swerers. It  is  this  sympathy  which  dif- 
ferentiates them  from  so  many  men  who, 
having  the  zeal  to  delight,  counsel,  and 
uplift  the  race,  fail  so  sadly  in  the  end. 
Many  a  sage,  reformer,  pulpiteer,  orator, 
truly  feels  for  his  fellow-men;  only  one 
with  the  touch  of  the  poet  feels  for  and 
with  them,  and  only  the  supreme  poet 
thus  feels  supremely.  But  his  is  not  a 
[33] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

petty  philanthropy;  his  is  not  so  much  a 
conscious  plan  as  a  bias  and  niotion  of  the 
soul. 

This  bias  and  motion  existed  in  the  soul 
of  the  Master.  It  was  deeper  than  his 
philosophy  and  deeper  than  his  purpose  to 
do  good  and  establish  good ;  it  was  the  soil 
out  of  which  these^grew  to  be  so  beautiful 
and  so  strong.  [The  son  of  Mary  was 
dowered  at  birth  above  the  rest  with  the 
impulse  and  the  power  to  love  and  to  min- 
ister. Out  of  his  character  sprang  his 
philosophy  and  his  purpose.  He  loved 
men  not  as  a  corollary  to  a  philosophic 
maxim  that  they  were  all  children  of  one 
God;  and  earth,  not  because  it  was  the 
footstool  of  the  Most  High;  but  because 
he  loved,  it  was  given  him  so  to  conceive 
both  man  and  nature,  and  to  find  in  that 
conception,  if  need  be,  rational  support 
for  his  loving.  He  went  about  doing 
good  not  with  a  sense  of  duty,  but  with 
that  sense  of  peace  that  comes  to  any  crea- 
ture in  the  fulfilment  of  its  being.  H 
[34] 


THE  LOVER 

His  compassion  for  the  multitudes  be- 
cause they  were  distressed  and  scattered 
as  sheep  not  having  a  shepherd,  his  charity 
for  the  outcast,  the  oppressed  and  the 
weary,  his  affection  for  the  innocence  of 
childhood,  are  among  the  tenderest  and 
sweetest  chapters  in  the  history  of  our 
race,  and  seem  to  have  made  the  prof  ound- 
est  impression  both  upon  those  whose  ex- 
ceeding fortune  it  was  to  see  his  human 
countenance  and  upon  the  ages  that  came 
after.  But  men  have  neglected  to  note 
that  this  was  an  expression  of  his  genius 
for  assimilating  the  world  to  himself, 
from  the  lilies  of  the  field  to  the  publicans 
and  sinners  with  whom  he  was  so  often 
seen  eating  and  drinking;  an  expression 
of  that  imaginative  sympathy  with  the 
varied  manifestations  of  life  which,  while 
it  gave  his  deeds  their  quality  of  beauty, 
contributed  also  to  give  his  words  their 
scope  and  vitality,  their  enduring  poetry. 


[35] 


THE  SEER 


THE  SEER 

AND  this  thought  leads  us  on;  for 
the  sympathy  of  the  lover  is  re- 
lated to  the  vision  of  the  seer. 
In  attempting  high  themes  we  may  lose 
ourselves  in  the  blue  sky;  yet  to  the  good 
word  seer,  often  so  carelessly  spoken,  there 
is  a  meaning  quite  definite  enough  for  the 
uses  of  earth.     We  observe  a  faculty  or 
action  of  mind  that  comes  at  the  heart  of 
things  directly,  an  intuition,  an  instinct 
that  sees  through  and  into:  it  may  be 
balked,  it  may  deceive  itself;  but  it  ex- 
ists, as  something  acting  after  its  own  law. 
It  dispenses  with  the  discursive  reason, 
and  may  achieve  results  beyond  the  reason. 
In  some  degree  it  is  a  faculty  of  all  men: 
of  the  merchant  who  sees  at  a  glance  the 
issue  of  an  intricate  venture  in  business  J 
[39] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

of  the  scientist  who  anticipates  experi- 
ment and  proof  with  a  new  application 
of  electricity;  of  the  scholar  who  swiftly 
restores  a  corrupted  reading;  of  the  states- 
man who  times  without  counting  the  pulse 
of  a  commonwealth;  of  the  general  on 
the  hill,  with  the  smoke  and  confusion  of 
contending  armies  before  him,  who  divines 
and  orders  the  movement  which  is  victory. 
But  it  is  most  active  in  the  realm  of  the 
spirit,  in  the  intimate  relations  of  soul  to 
soul,  or  soul  to  itself,  or  to  nature,  or  to 
God;  and  it  is  here  that  we  call  its  pos- 
sessor a  seer. 

The  mother  who  anticipates  the  wants 
of  her  child,  the  humanitarian  who,  in  his 
appreciation  of  a  fellow's  motives,  par- 
dons his  poor  performance,  the  poet  that 
knew 

"Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns/' 

is  each  in  so  far  a  seer.     Napoleon,  re- 
buking an  arrogant  English  lady  who  re- 
fused to  budge  for  a  heavy-laden  laborer 
[40] 


THE  SEER 

in  the  narrow  path  at  St.  Helena  with 
the  quiet  words,  "Respect  the  burden, 
madame,"  was  in  so  far  a  seer.  And  such 
was  Socrates  when  he  assured  the  judges 
that  uno  harm  can  befall  a  good  man, 
whether  he  be  alive  or  dead,"  and  went 
quietly  away  to  his  doom. 

Insight  in  any  case  depends  upon  an 
unembarrassed  familiarity  with  one's  ob- 
jects of  thought,  upon  keen  interest,  and, 
'like  the  power  to  see  and  remember  phe- 
nomena (the  subject  of  a  former  chap- 
ter), it  depends,  in  the  realm  of  spirit, 
above  all  upon  sympathy.  Those  who 
possess  it  least  are  known  as  the  tactless, 
the  literal-minded,  the  Philistines,  the 
bores,  the  plodding  slaves  or  the  recalci- 
trant obstacles  of  society,  according  as 
their  temperaments  are  docile  or  refrac- 
tory ;  those  who  possess  it  most  become  the 
men  and  women  of  genius,  discoverers, 
inventors,  helpers,  and 

"Singers  of  high  hymns." 
[41] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Jesus  consecrated  himself  to  one  inter- 
est. In  many  ways  he  gives  Evidence  of 
high  talents  any  one  of  which  might  have 
made  him  distinguished ;  but  they  were  all 
devoted  to  his  vision  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  He  renounced,  rather  it  is  likely 
he  scarcely  knew,  the  ordinary  ambitions 
of  men.  It  is  probably  not  literally  true 
that  he  was  tempted  in  all  things  just  as 
we;  it  is  probable  that  he  never  knew,  as 
most  of  us  know  too  well,  the  craving  for 
praise  of  honorable  achievement,  praise  so 
often  long  deferred  or  denied  altogether 
at  last,  the  craving  for  social  standing,  for 
money  to  live  generously,  for  a  plot  of 
land  on  which  to  set  a  house.  He  had  not 
to  conquer  the  sullen  pride  of  the  strong 
man  who  is  wounded  forever  by  seeing  the 
sons  of  mediocrity  and  convention  prefer- 
red again  and  again  in  place  and  fame. 
It  is  probable  that  he  never  felt  to  the  full 
the  mysterious  power,  old  and  fundamen- 
tal as  life,  that  depends  upon  sex.  And 
[42] 


THE  SEEK 

the  domestic  ties,  that,  noble  as  they  some- 
times are,  may  yet  divide,  disastrously  for 
his  individuality  and  for  the  world,  a 
man's  duties  between  his  vision  of  things 
beyond  and  his  wife  and  children  about 
him, — these  he  never  contracted.  If  in 
some  ways,  then,  his  life,  in  spite  of  its 
imaginative  comprehensiveness,  was  less 
varied  in  personal  experience  than 
Goethe's  or  Shakespeare's,  his  masterful 
singleness  of  purpose  gives  a  unity  to  that 
life  not  often  paralleled  in  history — a 
unity  made  perfect  by  a  sacred  martyr- 
dom. 

Thus  all  that  he  saw  and  all  that  he  re- 
ported as  seen  had  to  do  with  the  spiritual 
life ;  and  not  the  least  of  his  intuitions,  as 
it  was  the  principle  of  his  living,  was  that 
by  seeking  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  all 
else  needful  would  be  added  unto  the 
seeker;  and,  whatever  regeneration  or 
structure  of  society,  or  empire  of  the  fu- 
ture may  have  been  in  his  thought,  that 
[43] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Kingdom  meant  to  him,  it  is  clear,  in  all 
that  is  essential  to  an  understdnding  of  his 
spirit,  the  reign  of  righteousness.1 

Though  we  have  no  test  of  his  validity 
beyond  the  applause  of  our  own  souls,  he 
was  surely  the  seer  of  seers. 

He  was  the  great  seer  of  the  real  values 
of  life.  He  knew  what  counts  when  man 
is  estimated  by  eternity  and  not  by  time, 
by  his  infinite  possibilities  and  not  by  his 
ephemeral  whims,  desires,  vanities.  He 
knew  the  heritage  of  man,  his  birthright 
in  a  kingdom  not  of  this  world,  with  this 
world's  petty  and  factitious  successes  and 
honors.  He  knew  that  the  body  was  more 
than  raiment,  and  that,  as  it  was  written, 
man  should  not  live  by  bread  alone. 

He  saw  through  shams :  the  pretense  of 
the  complacent  rich  and  sanctimonious — 
verily  they  have  their  reward,  a  miserable 
reward  equal  to  their  miserable  fatuity. 


i  So  with  the  opposite  conception :  the  outer  darkness 
meant  essentially  separation  from  that  God  in  whom  is1 
no  darkness  whatever,  neither  shadow  of  turning. 

[44] 


THE  SEER 

He  saw  through  shams:  the  formalism 
of  long  robes,  chief  seats,  broad  phylac- 
teries, vain  repetitions,  and  punctilious  ob- 
servance of  sacrifice  and  ritual,  washings 
of  cups  and  pots  and  brazen  vessels,  that 
were  but  a  cleansing  of  the  outside  of  the 
platter  at  best,  and  often  sheer  misunder- 
standing and  spiritual  loss.  He  knew 
that  the  sabbath  was  made  for  man  and 
not  man  for  the  sabbath,  and  that  the 
altar  is  greater  than  the  gift  which  by  that 
altar  is  sanctified. 

He  saw  through  shams:  and  not  even 
the  magnificence  of  king  or  palace  dis- 
turbed that  sure  vision;  nor  did  the  silver 
trumpets,  blown  daily  by  the  priests  from 
the  gleaming  towers  of  the  temple  to 
usher  in  the  sunrise  over  Jerusalem,  win 
his  ear  from  sounds  that  told  him  of  a 
more  glorious  dawn.  And  it  is  recorded 
that  his  disciples  once  wanted  to  show  him 
the  marvels  of  the  temple  architecture: 
"What  manner  of  stones  and  what  man- 
ner of  buildings !"  they  cried,  as  they  went 
[45] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

with  Jesus  down  the  majestic  flights  of 
steps,  by  pillar  and  portico,  through  the 
passages  within  the  huge  outer  gate,  on 
either  side,  as  they  looked,  the  splendid 
constructions  of  Herod  the  Great,  which 
Josephus  described  and  the  excavations 
are  now  revealing  and  Titus  desired  to 
spare  as  among  the  wonders  of  the  world. 
.  .  .  But  Jesus  called  the  disciples 
and  went  on  to  the  Mount  of  Olives — 
these  things  counted  after  all  not  much 
beside  the  temple  not  made  with  hands. 

As  nothing  was  too  imposing  to  distract 
him,  so  nothing  was  too  insignificant  to 
escape.  There  is  a  story  that  once  he  sat 
down  over  against  the  treasury  of  the 
temple,  and  beheld  how  the  multitude  cast 
money  into  the  treasury.  And  many  that 
were  rich  cast  in  much.  And  there  came  a 
poor  widow,  and  she  cast  in  two  mites, 
which  make  a  farthing.  And  he  called 
unto  his  disciples  and  said  unto  them, 
"Verily  I  say  unto  you,  this  poor  widow 
cast  in  more  than  all  they  which  are  cast- 
[46] 


THE  SEER 

ing  into  the  treasury:  for  they  all  did  cast 
in  of  their  superfluity ;  but  she  of  her  want 
did  cast  in  all  that  she  had,  even  all  of 
her  living." 

He  came  so  close  to  the  ultimate  reali- 
ties that  we  startle  and  draw  back:  even 
the  traditional  ties  and  the  primeval  affec- 
tions of  family  and  fireside,  that  so  uni- 
versally influence  in  thought  and  action 
the  independence  of  men  far  less  loving 
than  he,  could  not  impede  his  sight  or  turn 
his  steps.  Real  kinship  of  man  to  man  he 
knew  depended  not  upon  the  accidents  of 
a  common  blood  and  the  birth  of  the  phys- 
ical body  from  a  common  womb,  but  upon 
the  spiritual  relationships  of  a  spiritual 
household  with  common  spiritual  aims. 
He  who  doeth  the  will  of  the  Eternal  and 
Divine  is  my  brother  and  sister  and 
mother,  he  said;  and  he  departed  from  the 
Galilean  roof  of  his  infancy,  and  the  un- 
happy woman  who  in  her  girlhood  had 
given  his  physical  body  to  the  world  could 
never  call  him  home. 
[47] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

He  was  the  great  seer  of  spiritual  laws. 
He  knew  the  principles  which,1  unseen  but 
sure,  are  forever  at  work  building  up  or 
breaking  down  the  soul:  except  ye  turn 
and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  in 
no  wise  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven;  the  wages  of  sin  is  death,  and 
he  that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it.  He 
knew  that  love  begets  love,  anil  that  hate 
begets  hate,  and  that  whoever  takes  the 
sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword;  that  to 
him  that  hath  shall  be  given;  that  whoso- 
ever shall  humble  himself  shall  be  exalted, 
and  the  meek  shall  inherit  the  earth.  To 
him  man  without  God  was  man  without 
life. 

With  courageous  initiative  and  self- 
reliance  he  shifted  the  emphasis  from  ac- 
tion to  motive,  from  the  outer  to  the  inner 
life:  not  that  which  entereth  into  the 
mouth  defileth  a  man,  but  that  which  pro- 
ceedeth  out  of  the  mouth,  this  defileth  a 
man;  everyone  that  looketh  on  a  woman  to 
lust  after  her  hath  already  committed 
[48] 


THE  SEER 

adultery  with  her  in  his  heart;  the  King- 
dom of  God  is  within  you.  And  even  the 
extravagance  of  the  woman  who  broke  the 
alabaster  cruse  of  ointment  of  spikenard 
very  costly,  pouring  it  over  his  head,  how- 
ever much  the  action  clashed  with  the  aus- 
tere poverty  he  preached,  he  could  still 
receive  as  a  good  work  of  impulsive  love, 
that  should  ever  after  be  spoken  of  for 
a  memorial  of  her. 

His  use  of  the  Scriptures  of  his  people 
shows  the  same  man:  he  quotes  its  living 
ideas  and  inspiring  examples,  as  a  great 
poet  rejoices  to  quote  his  peers. 

For,  if  the  Poet  of  Galilee  was  a  seer, 
he  was  also  a  scholar,  as  the  poets  have 
always  been  scholars,  that  is,  investigators, 
critics  and  adapters  of  the  best  that  their 
predecessors  or  contemporaries,  their  fath- 
ers or  their  brothers  in  spirit,  had  deliv- 
ered unto  men.  There  is  no  human  occu- 
pation that  combines  originality  with 
tradition,  the  look  ahead  with  the  look 
behind  and  around,  more  than  that  of  the 
[49] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

poet.  Hence  the  popularity  of  histories 
of  literature — in  their  essenc^  histories  of 
poetry  or  what  has  significance  only  in  so 
far  as  it  partakes  of  poetry.  In  one  con- 
nection or  another  these  pages  will  refer 
to  the  generally  unappreciated  similari- 
ties between  the  words  of  Jesus  and  the 
words  of  other  wise  men  of  his  race. 
There  is  his  use  of  parable,  of  question 
and  answer,  and  of  religious  terminology, 
indicating  probably  personal  association 
with  influential  Rabbis,  whose  methods  he 
adopted  as  they  suited  his  needs.1  There 
is  his  use  of  Hebraic  parallelism  and  of 
parabolic  and  invective  passages  from 
Isaiah,  which,  with  his  ready  quotations 
and  his  incisive  arguments  on  sacred 
texts  which  he  handled  with  the  freedom 
of  a  higher  critic,  indicate  a  degree  of 
familiarity  with  a  past  literature  that  be- 
longs only  to  the  makers  of  literature. 


i  He  was  himself  sometimes  addressed  as  Rabbi,  if  the 
tradition  be  reliable. 


[50] 


THE  SEER 

And  these  points  it  has  seemed  necessary 
to  anticipate  here  in  connection  with  the 
thought  of  the  page  before  us:  Jesus 
had  the  scholarship  of  the  poet.  And  be- 
cause he  was  poet,  his  scholarship  never 
betrayed  him,  as  scholarship  was  all  around 
him  betraying  his  educated  countrymen, 
into  the  pedantry  of  a  narrow  intellectual- 
ism. 

Seer  and  scholar  also :  to  these  add  Man 
of  Thought.  The  genius  to  see  into  real- 
ity, the  curiosity  to  master  and  the  skill  to 
adopt  the  products  of  other  minds  do  not 
exclude  but  do  directly  imply  the  medita- 
tive habit.  The  life  of  Jesus  was  one  long 
meditation,  a  conning  over  and  over  of 
all  that  he  heard  or  observed,  or  read  or 
felt  or  devised.  Behold  him,  true  kins- 
man of  all  the  poets  that  he  was,  forever 
thinking  and  forever  thinking.  Now  he 
is  fitting  the  planks  for  a  neighbor's  door, 
and  we  overhear  the  murmured  fragments 
of  a  proverb  or  a  psalm.  Now  he  is 
seated  at  sunset  before  the  house,  while 
[51] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Joseph  and  Mary  are  talking;  but  the 
youth  Jesus  is  silent.  Now  he  is  in  the 
synagogue  or  by  the  shore,  now  he  is  sail- 
ing across  Gennesaret,  now  he  is  walking 
along  the  mountain  highways  of  Samaria, 
now  he  is  with  friends  in  Bethany,  olive- 
crowned  suburb  of  the  Holy  City.  And 
if  we  look  into  his  eyes,  wherever  he  be, 
still  is  he  the  Man  of  Thought. 

Note  what  this  means.  Our  modern 
plotting  and  planning  for  self-aggran- 
dizement in  business,  politics,  or  learning, 
our  restless  reading  of  magazine  and 
newspaper  and  empty  book  after  empty 
book,  our  weeks  and  years  of  gossip  in 
drawing  room,  club,  and  dining  hall,  the 
squandering  of  our  sabbaths  in  the  vani- 
ties or  boredom  of  conventional  worship, 
varied  only  by  the  equally  melancholy 
waste  of  our  deeper  selves  in  vacations 
devoted  to  aimlessly  killing  the  creatures 
of  the  stream  and  forest,  or  to  rushing 
about  through  galleries  and  museums 
without  why  and  wherefore,  this  manner 
[52] 


THE  SEER 

of  being  affording  us,  as  it  does,  but  the 
flimsiest  opportunities  for  thought,  is  as 
far  from  the  daily  conduct  of  Jesus  as  is 
the  ultimate  and  abiding  light  of  the  pa- 
tient stars  from  the  rolling  planet  on 
whose  burrowed  and  builded  circumfer- 
ence this  feverish  and  trivial  life  of  ours 
goes  on.  Out  of  such  a  life  issue  never- 
more the  poets  and  saviors  of  men.  But 
to  understand  how  different  the  thinking 
of  the  Man  of  Thought  was  from  our 
own,  wre  must  remember  that  the  differ- 
ence is  not  only  in  environment  and  habits, 
but  in  individual  capacity.  Our  inca- 
pacity to  think,  our  resourcelessness  when 
alone  and  thrown  back  on  the  secret  places 
of  ourselves,  this  it  is  that  perpetuates  a 
petty  and  external  existence.  Had  we 
every  opportunity  to  think,  we  would  be 
long  in  learning  to  use  it;  and  when  per- 
chance we  had  learned,  how  little  could 
we  report  to  a  thinker  like  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth? 

But  he  outtopped  his  own  generation 
[53] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

also.  He  is  as  far  beyond  P^ul  who  came 
after  as  he  seems  to  be  beyond  John  who 
came  before — the  only  men  of  his  time 
with  whom  he  may  be  compared.  Of 
John  we  know  too  little ;  but  Paul,  though 
he  mastered  an  idea,  dynamic  indeed  for 
those  days,  that  neither  is  circumcision 
anything  nor  uncircumcision  but  a  new 
creature,  and  realized  that  the  letter  kill- 
eth  but  the  spirit  giveth  life,  and  rose  at 
times  to  a  trumpet  eloquence  for  his  Mas- 
ter and  the  cause,  is  yet  chiefly  engrossed 
with  dogmatic  theology  and  somewhat 
with  practical  matters  of  form  and  church 
discipline.  Paul  was  a  tremendous  moral 
force,  but  he  was  an  expounder  and  or- 
ganizer rather  than  a  seer,  logician  rather 
than  thinker.  To  him  the  Christian  move- 
ment owes  its  start  and  direction;  but  it 
is  a  question  if  to-day  his  influence  has 
not  become  a  hindrance  to  the  truth  of 
Jesus. 

To  enlarge  upon  these  things  were  to 
attempt  a  detailed  interpretation  of  the 
[54] 


THE  SEER 

teachings  of  Jesus,  and  this  were  not 
within  my  purpose,  even  were  it  within 
my  power.  It  is  enough  here  to  grasp  the 
fundamental  fact  that  these  teachings  are 
the  beautiful  enunciations  of  spiritual  in- 
sight, like  the  great  ideas  and  the  great 
sentences  of  all  true  answerers  and  poets : 
like  the 

"KaSSvra/uv  8s  €pSe«>  t€p*  aOavdroKTi  Oeolcri."  : 

of  Hesiod,  which  Socrates  loved  to  quote ; 
like  the 

«j»\\  if  «     A    ^  'O      "  2 

Act  yap  ev  irnrTOWiv  01  mo?  Kvpoi 

of  Sophocles ;  like  Dante's 

"In  la  sua  volontate  e  nostra  pace";  3 

or  Goethe's 

"Nur  der  verdient  sich  Freilieit^  wie  das  Leben^ 
Der  taeglich  sie  erobern  muss" ; 4 


1  "According  to  thine  ability  do  sacrifice  to  the  im- 
mortal gods." 

2  "Nature's  dice  are  always  loaded." 
s  "In  his  will  is  our  peace." 

4  "Only  he  deserves  freedom  and  life  who  claily  must 
conquer  them  anew." 

[55] 


THE  POET  OE  GALILEE 

or  Milton's  i 

"They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 

I  cite  purposely  from  men  of  different 
times  and  tongues;  but  were  I  to  name 
that  seer  who  is  most  like  the  Master  in 
his  vision  of  these  things,  however  differ- 
ent in  respect  of  temperament,  environ- 
ment, and  much  besides,  I  should  name 
Emerson.  No  man  that  has  spoken  out 
since  Jesus  has  gazed  so  directly,  so  stead- 
ily, so  calmly  into  the  Face  of  the  Eternal; 
and  no  man  that  has  spoken  out  since 
Jesus  has  mastered  so  completely  the  laws 
of  spiritual  being.  The  "Divinity  School 
Address"  has  passages  almost  as  wonder- 
ful as  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and 
there,  and  there  above  all  the  writings  of 
men,  it  seems  to  me,  is  something  like  just 
interpretation  of  the  thought  of  Jesus. 

If  the  great  poets  are  the  answerers,  as 

one  of  the  greatest  has  told  us  they  are, 

and  as  the  response  of  our  ears  tells  us 

they  are,  though  the  court  musicians  and 

156] 


THE  SEER 

singers  come  and  go  in  their  own  right 
too,  then  is  Jesus  among  the  great  poets 
— for  his  words  are  the  bread  of  life. 

But  like  all  great  poets  he  saw  his  ideals 
so  absolutely  that  he  disregarded  any  prac- 
tical details  of  their  realization:  he  pub- 
lished no  catechism  of  morals,  no  "instruc- 
tions" for  worship.  And  like  every  great 
poet,  he  failed  to  exhaust  his  subject — 
there  is  more  day  to  dawn,  more  light; 
"The  sun  itself,"  says  Thoreau,  "is  but  a 
morning  star."  Yet,  as  an  educator  and 
comforter  of  the  spirit,  he  cannot  soon 
grow  needless  or  old. 

But  it  demands  the  poet  to  understand 
the  poet,  the  seer  to  read  aright  the  seer. 
Embrangled  in  literalism  and  logic  from 
the  Fathers  down  through  the  Schoolmen 
to  the  rationalism  of  the  late  Renaissance 
and  modern  theology,  distorted  in  the 
symbolism  of  Catholic  rhapsodist  and 
Protestant  metaphysician,  burlesqued  on 
the  ungentle  tongues  of  latter-day  reviv- 
alists, the  thought  of  Jesus,  no  less  than 
[57] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

the  person  of  Jesus,  has  suffered  more 
from  our  human  dullness  than  that  of  any 
other  messenger  to  men. 

That  thought  is  not  always  easy. 
There  are  no  harder  sayings  anywhere 
than  are  to  be  found  in  the  logia  of  the 
Synoptics.  How  many  sermons  have  ever 
fully  expounded  the  "texts,"  the  sayings, 
quoted  above,  or  the  Beatitudes,  or  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  or  these? — 

"Let  your  light  shine  before  men,  that 
they  may  see  your  good  works  and  glorify; 
your  Father  which  is  in  Heaven." 

"Where  thy  treasure  is,  there  will  thy 
heart  be  also." 

"He  that  seeketh,  findeth." 

"Swear  not  at  all." 

"Follow  me;  and  leave  the  dead  to  bury 
their  own  dead." 

"But  whosoever  shall  blaspheme  against 
the  Holy  Spirit  hath  never  forgiveness." 

"And  there  are  eunuchs,  which  made 
themselves  eunuchs  for  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven's  sake." 

[58] 


THE  SEER 

"It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  re- 
ceive" (preserved  by  Paul  in  Acts). 

We  are  told  that  the  common  people 
heard  him  gladly;  we  may  be  sure  that 
they  did  not  always  understand  him  fully. 
Indeed  we  get  hints  that  they  did  not  from 
the  Gospels  themselves.1 

We  forget  that  the  living  Jesus  may 
well  have  attracted  his  fellows  more  by 
his  personality — more  by  his  gentleness, 
faith,  and  goodness,  by  his  tone,  look,  and 
gesture — than  by  his  ideas.  The  com- 
mon people  understood  his  heart  indeed 
better  than  others  in  a  more  artificial  and 
calculating  society  have  ever  understood 
it.  They  felt  those  generous  emotions, 
which,  in  the  common  people,  are  pecu- 
liarly strong  to  over-ride  the  cold  dictates 


1 1  have  since  been  pleased  to  find  this  somewhat  un- 
usual point  of  view  taken  also  by  one  from  whom  I 
differ  so  radically  in  other  respects,  the  eminent  evan- 
gelist, the  Rev.  W.  J.  Dawson  of  London,  who  says  in 
The  Empire  of  Love,  "He  spent  his  wealth  of  intellect 
upon  inferior  persons — fishermen  and  the  like,  who  did 
not  comprehend  one  tithe  of  what  He  said." 

[59] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

of  prudence  or  justice,  strong  also  in  him 
(witness  his  forgiveness  of  Peter  and  of 
the  adulteress),  and  present  also  in  the 
stories  he  told  them  (witness  the  welcome 
to  the  prodigal  and  the  rebuke  to  the  duti- 
ful son) .  But  this  must  not  be  mistaken 
for  understanding  his  thought.  So  the 
stage-drivers,  ferrymen,  and  wharf- 
loungers  loved  Whitman  the  comrade,  but 
never  divined  Whitman  the  poet. 

Moreover,  there  must  have  been  among 
Jesus'  words,  also  quite  apart  from  his 
teachings,  much  to  attract  the  interest  of 
humble  men  by  virtue  of  his  swift  repar- 
tees and  the  lively  incidents  of  his  tales, 
even  though  he  himself  seems  to  have  used 
both  always  only  to  enforce  his  teachings. 
And,  unless  human  nature  has  radically 
changed  in  these  two  thousand  years,  they 
must  have  heard  him  gladly  also  for  his 
forthright  denunciations  of  the  ruling 
classes,  even  as  they  must  have  followed 
him  expectantly  for  his  repute  as  a  worker 
of  wonders. 

[60] 


THE  SEER 

And  though  some  of  his  precepts  seem 
simple  enough,  as  "Love  your  enemies/' 
"Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  they 
should  do  unto  you," — their  implications 
are  far-reaching,  and  they  are  perhaps  still 
not  much  more  completely  realized  in  the 
thought  than  in  the  practice  of  mankind. 

On  the  other  hand,  had  there  not  been 
from  the  beginning  some  to  whom  their 
meaning  was  not  entirely  hidden,  some 
who  guessed  something  of  their  signifi- 
cance, tradition  would  not  have  preserved 
them  for  the  written  record,  nor  would 
they  have  since  become  the  proverbs  of  all 
the  lands. 

But  deep  and  beautiful  as  is  his 
thought,  it  is  not  in  its  genesis  uniquely 
inexplicable.  His  insight,  be  it  repeated, 
is  the  common  gift  of  all  the  seers,  in  one 
degree  or  another, — indeed  of  the  whole 
race  in  so  far  as  it  understands  its  seers. 
Jesus  still  belongs  to  the  brotherhood  of 
man. 

His  ideas  were  his  and  not  his.  Here 
[61] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

and  there  one  or  another  of  them  may 
be  found  by  the  rivers  of  Chin^i  and  India, 
on  Persian  plateaus,  in  Athenian  market- 
place, grove  and  portico,  by  the  seven  hills 
of  the  Eternal  City,  in  the  tombs  of  dead 
Egypt;  for  the  World-spirit  has  not  at 
vany  time  long  left  itself  without  a  witness 
in  the  world  which  is  his. 

Again,  if  the  thought  of  Jesus  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  universal  mind 
of  man  is  not  absolutely  unique,  it  is  also 
not  unique  from  the  point  of  view  of  his- 
tory. His  ideas  were  his  and  not  his. 
They  were  among  the  ejaculations  of  the 
ancient  prophets  and  psalmists  whom  he 
read;  they  were  to  be  found  even  among 
the  maxims  of  the  Rabbis  of  his  own  time 
whom,  doubtless,  he  heard.  The  phrases 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Beatitudes, 
and  the  Golden  Rule  itself,  find  their  par- 
allels in  contemporary  Jewry.  They 
were  the  gifts  of  his  people  to  Jesus.  In- 
deed, this  is  so  true  that  some  Jewish  critics 
have  affirmed  that  Jesus  was  chiefly  a 
[62] 


THE  SEER 

popularizer  of  Hillel  and  others,  and  have 
denied  him  originality  altogether. 

But  a  truth  of  the  intellect,  a  fact  in 
astronomy,  physics,  or  philology,  needs  to 
be  discovered  but  once,  and  it  becomes 
forthwith  the  possession  of  all.  The 
truths  of  the  spirit  must  be  forever  dis- 
covered and  spoken  anew;  the  soul  too 
readily  lapses  with  fatigue  or  disgust.  It 
becomes  blind:  its  eyes  demand  to  be 
touched  with  the  finger  of  a  new  prophet ; 
hence  the  eternal  need  of  new  poets.  But 
reiteration  of  spiritual  truth  is  only  a  re- 
discovery and  brings  only  an  awakening 
when  it  comes  from  the  mouth  of  a  vital- 
izing personality.  The  originality  of 
Jesus  was  not  that  he  alone  saw  the  heav- 
enly vision,  but  that  it  gripped  his  whole 
being  as  it  did.  The  originality  of  Jesus 
was  that  he  spoke  as  one  having  authority 
and  not  as  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees. 
With  this  I  do  not  mean  that  his  orig- 
inality was  not  also  in  his  seeing  more  and 
farther,  and  in  his  speaking  with  more 
[63] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

skill  than  any  one  other ;  but  it  is  their  emo- 
tional stress  even  more  than  their  content 
and  their  form,  the  sincerity  of  conviction, 
the  vital  experience  out  of  which  they 
spring,  that  makes  his  words  carry  so 
far.  So,  more  than  all  arguments  of  theo- 
logians, more  than  all  assertions  of  pul- 
piteers, more  than  all  my  own  reasoned 
theism,  is  to  me  the  assurance  of  Emerson: 
"Ah,  my  brother,  God  exists." 


[64J 


THE  INSPIRED 


THE   INSPIRED 

IN  his  hours  of  vision  the  poet  seems 
to  have  had  from  of  old  a  feeling  of 
ravishment,  a  sense  of  obligation  to 
a  superior  power.  With  the  court  singers 
Apollo  is  a  literary  convention,  as  with 
the  court  preachers  the  Almighty  is  some- 
times a  priestly  convention;  but  in  the 
earnest  times  and  in  the  earnest  places  of 
the  world  they  have  been  and  still  are  the 
great  realities.  The  subjugation  of  the 
Sibyl  in  Vergil,  the  divine  coal  that 
touched  the  prophet's  mouth  in  Isaiah,  are 
abiding  symbols  of  the  poet's  belief.  "The 
man  who  is  his  own  master  knocks  in  vain 
at  the  door  of  poetry,"  said  Plato.  "I 
like  my  poems  best  [i.  e.,  of  what  I  have 
done],  for  it  was  not  I  who  wrote  them," 
[67] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

said  Emerson;  and  they  spoke  for  all  the 
poets.  j 

Whether  this  belief  have  foundation  in 
a  spiritual  fact,  or  be  but  one  more  delu- 
sion of  the  human  soul  in  its  growth  to- 
ward self-realization  and  power,  I  fear 
to  assert.  Nor  is  it  necessary:  I  want 
here  to  emphasize  not  a  fact  in  the  divine 
economy,  but  a  fact  in  the  soul's  life,  if 
indeed  in  the  last  analysis  such  a  distinc- 
tion be  possible.  The  poet  feels  that  he 
is  inspired,  and  the  greater  the  poet,  the 
greater  and  more  immediate  his  convic- 
tion, whether  he  phrase  it  as  Jehovah  in 
the  whirlwind,  or  as  the  Sungod  on  Par- 
nassus, as 

"Calliope  of  the  beautiful  dear  voice/' 

or  as  the 

"Heavenly  Muse,  that  on  the  secret  top 
Of  Oreb  or  of  Sinai  didst  inspire 
That  Shepherd,  who  first  taught  the  chosen 
seed     .     .     ." 

or  simply  conceive  his  inspiration  as  the 
divine  principle  awake  within  him. 
[68] 


THE  INSPIRED 

No  man  ever  experienced  this  conviction 
more  intensely  than  Jesus  of  Nazareth: 
the  word  of  the  Lord  was  upon  him,  and 
he  was  appointed  to  preach  glad  tidings. 
It  was  not  a  sudden  conviction,  we  may 
well  helieve;  it  began  even  in  childhood, 
if  we  may  trust  the  striking  anecdote  in 
Luke^  when  he  wist  he  must  be  about  his 
Father's  business;  and  it  grew  with  long 
brooding  and  prayer,  whilst  he  himself 
grew  in  wisdom  and  stature  in  his  Gali- 
lean home.  It  was  the  law  of  his  soul 
slowly  working  itself  out;  but  the  form  of 
the  law's  expression  depended  with  him, 
as  with  all  men,  upon  the  age  in  which 
he  lived  and  the  ages  from  which  he  came. 
He  knew  the  thought  of  his  time  and  the 
thought  of  his  fathers;  and  out  of  this 
knowledge  he  built  his  conception  of  him- 
self as  a  prophet  in  Israel,  and,  it  seems 
fair  to  conjecture  in  spite  of  some  critics, 
as  the  Messiah  himself.  This  conception 
seems  to  have  mastered  him  in  life  and  to 
have  sustained  him  in  death. 
[69] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

With  it  went  the  consecration  that  ever 
accompanies  the  poet's  dreanji,  and  gives 
even  to  those  poets  whose  visions  are  of  the 
holiness  of  beauty  and  not  of  the  beauty 
of  holiness,  or  perhaps  of  aught  entirely 
outside  of  the  ethical  life,  a  profoundly 
ethical  character.  In  spite  of  temporal 
ambitions  and  vanities  that  may  beset  him, 
in  spite  of  mere  joy  of  creative  speech 
that  we  call  art  for  art's  sake,  every  true 
poet  has  at  least  his  moments  of  conse- 
cration. With  some  it  is  not  realized  in 
self -consciousness;  with  others  it  becomes 
their  silent  admonition  and  noble  pride. 
I  believe  the  consecration  of  Jesus  in  its 
ultimate  nature  differed  not  from  the 
consecration  of  Milton  or  Wordsworth: 
it  was  one  with  the  consecration  of  the 
poet  conscious  of  his  aim. 

With  the  conviction  of  inspiration  and 
with  the  consecration  goes,  too,  the  seer's, 
the  poet's  confidence  of  mien,  which  in 
their  imitators  appears  as  arrogance  or 
conceit.  They  feel  it  is  their  ultimate 
[70] 


THE  INSPIRED 

right,  founded  in  the  nature  of  things, 
to  be  heard  and  heard  through;  their  large 
egotism  silences  conventional  rebuke  by 
the  sincerity  and  strength  of  its  pronun- 
ciamentos.  Thus  we  may  understand  the 
exalted  confidence  of  Jesus. 


171] 


THE  MAN  OF  SORROWS 


THE  MAN  OF  SORROWS 

THE  poet's  vision  of  the  unseen 
Completeness  makes  poignant  his 
realization  of  the  imperfection  and 
incompleteness  of  the  world  about  him. 
If  his  ideal  be  beauty,  it  renders  him  sen- 
sitive to  earth's  ugliness  and  filth;  if  it 
be  goodness,  then  to  earth's  selfishness  and 
sloth;  if  it  be  truth,  to  earth's  error  and 
confusion.  Not  even  a  faith  in  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  his  ideals,  nor  a  philos- 
ophy that  makes  all  things  alike  manifes- 
tations of  divine  energy,  usually  subdues 
his  nature  altogether  to  resignation.  His 
discontent  with  Earth  is  the  price  he  pays 
for  his  visitings  in  Heaven. 

Jesus    was    a    sublimely    discontented 
soul.     What  might  be  on  earth,  what  he 
felt  should  be  on  earth,  filled  him  with 
[75] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

grief  and  dismay  before  what  he  saw  was 
upon  earth.  He  preached  glafi  tidings- 
tidings  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  and  of  a  coming  day 
of  righteousness;  he  bade  men  rejoice  and 
be  exceeding  glad;  sometimes  he  sang  with 
triumph  and  joyousness;  but  how  often 
we  hear  the  undertones  of  quiet  sadness— 

"Der  Menschheit  ganzer  Jammer  fasst  mich  an."  * 

And  this  was  inevitably  deepened  by  his 
personal  afflictions,  by  the  abuse  and  iso- 
lation he  endured;  for  he  was  from  the 
beginning  the  rejected  of  men,  and  while 
even  the  foxes  had  their  holes,  the  Gali- 
lean prophet  had  not  where  to  lay  his 
head.  Touched  with  the  oriental  melan- 
choly as  he  was,  though  never  yielding 
long  to  despair,  he  had  not  the  tempera- 
mental buoyancy  of  Emerson,  the  Occi- 
dental, who,  a  rare  exception  among  the 
poets,  seems  grandly  incapable  of  taking 
evil  seriously. 


i"I  feel  the  whole  sorrow  of  the  human  race." 

[76] 


THE  MAN  OF  SORROWS 

The  Nazarene's,  as  we  know,  was  a  su- 
preme vision  of  righteousness.  But  he 
found  naught  like  it  in  Galilee,  or  in 
Judea,  or  in  the  regions  beyond  the  Jor- 
dan. This  is  the  tragedy  of  his  life,  of 
which  the  tears  of  Gethsemane,  the 
scourge,  the  crown  of  thorns,  were  but 
the  last  eventful  scenes.  It  was  the  dis- 
content of  the  poet;  his  pain  was  "the  pain 
of  genius":  he  was  crucified  many  times 
before  Calvary. 

But  one  pain  at  least,  let  us  trust,  was 
spared  him.  Legend  has  loved  to  dwell 
upon  Jesus  as  among  men  alone  the  sinless 
one;  but,  though  we  have  little  warrant 
from  the  fragmentary  facts  of  the  Synop- 
tics and  from  Jesus'  explicit  words  l  in 
making  him  a  perfect  being,  nothing  can 
impugn  the  essential  sublimity  of  his  char- 
acter. Thus  one  pain  was  spared  him: 
he  had  not  to  suffer  the  pain  of  mocking 
his  own  visions  by  any  disloyalty  or 
weakness  in  himself. 


i"Why  callest  thou  me  good?" 

[77] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

With  men  of  genius  the  power  of  see- 
ing is  peculiarly  greater  thai}  the  power 
of  being:  Byron,  who  knew 

"The  high,  the  mountain  majesty  of  worth/' 

hated  himself,  with  defiant  scorn,  for  his 
own  defection  to  impurity,  and  in  this  his 
fellow  poets  have  reason  to  understand 
him  best.  But  it  was  not  so  with  Jesus; 
and  what  he  saw  so  little  realized  around 
him  he  could  feel  wonderfully  realized 
and  justified  in  his  own  life. 

And  a  corollary.  The  validity  of  a 
man's  thought  in  no  wise  depends  upon 
his  conduct — it  is  what  it  is.  Yet  when 
his  conduct  is  in  accord,  there  is  not  only 
the  gain  of  joy  to  him,  but  a  gain  to  man 
in  the  authority  of  his  message.  So  Em- 
erson, with  his  gentleness  and  self-control, 
is  more  than  Carlyle,  the  fractious  and 
gruff;  so  Socrates  and  Jesus  emphasized 
for  all  time  their  great  thoughts  by  living 
and  by  dying  greatly. 

[78] 


?THE  SCOURGER 


THE    SCOURGER 

THE  dissonance  between  what  should 
be  and  what  is  made  Jesus  the  Man 
of  Sorrows;  but  though  acquainted 
with  grief,  he  was  not  the  weak,  almost 
complacent  sufferer,  long  celebrated  in 
art.  He  was  a  man,  and  that  makes  his 
tears  the  more  poignant.  Nor  did  his  pity 
render  him  a  sentimentalist  or  coward.  A 
recent  author  explains  the  writing  on  the 
ground  in  the  scene  with  the  woman  taken 
in  adultery  as  evincing  the  maiden  mod- 
esty of  Jesus,  and  reverently  commends 
his  delicacy  toward  womankind:  away 
with  such  mawkishness  forever  in  the  pres- 
ence of  such  men  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth! 
Do  the  masters  of  life  fear  to  look  the 
Scarlet  Woman  in  the  face?  Do  they* 
blush?  Do  they  fidget?  Jesus  was  a 
[81] 


THE  POEX  OF  GALILEE 

man,  and  this  makes  his  pity  pity  indeed. 
But  again,  not  in  all  moods  was  he  the 
Man  of  Sorrows.  This  eternal  dissonance 
of  the  world  at  times  kindled  within  him 
a  quick  and  devastating  flame.  Jesus  had 
not  the  winsome  serenity  of  Emerson,  nor 
the  unruffled  grimace  of  that  divine  old 
meddler  of  Athens.  He  had  not  the  res- 
ignation and ,  supineness  of  the  Indian 
sage;  in  this,  as  perhaps  in  some  other 
things,  the  great  Hebrew  was  not  a  typi- 
cal Oriental.  He  could  lose  his  temper 
magnificently.  His  indignation  could 
use  the  whip  on  the  money-changers;  it 
could  heap  upon  the  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees rebuke  and  sarcasm,  and  call  them 
blind  guides,  hypocrites,  serpents,  off- 
spring of  vipers — stinging  names,  the 
meaning  of  which,  unlike  that  of  his  max- 
ims, was  certainly  never  likely  to  be  missed 
by  his  hearers.  He  had  a  side  that  re- 
sembles the  harsher  John  the  Baptist,  if 
indeed  their  characters  and  words  have 
not  more  or  less  coalesced  in  the  Apostolic 
[82] 


THE  S^OURGER 

tradition.  The  Lamb  of  God  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  is  sometimes  the  Scourge 
of  God  in  the  Synoptics. 

His  indignation  could  drive  him,  it 
seems,  even  to  ungraciousness  and  defi- 
ance, to  gratuitous  discourtesies  incon- 
gruous with 

"The  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed/' 

if  Luke  XI,  be  historical  and  typical ;  for 
the  anecdote  records  that,  accepting  an  in- 
vitation to  dine  with  a  Pharisee,  he  de- 
liberately sat  down  to  meat  without  first 
washing,  and  thus  forced  a  discussion  of 
his  peculiar  views,  which  he  was  not  slow 
to  follow  up  with  hard  words  to  his  host 
and  the  guests.  Yet  perhaps  he  sus- 
pected that  the  Pharisee  had  invited  him, 
not  from  courtesy,  but  from  curiosity; 
and  he  may  have  thus  felt  justified  in 
giving  his  drastic  object  lesson. 

In  a  prophetic  age  he  might  have  sur- 
passed  the   fierce   "woes"   of   the    First 
Isaiah,  which  he  obviously  emulated;  in 
[83] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

a  literary  environment  the  truculent  satire 
of  Juvenal,  without  Juvenal's  taint  of 
grossness  and  literary  affectation;  his  in- 
vective has  the  same  keenness  and  forth- 
rightness,  and  springs  from  a  like  element 
in  his  nature. 

The  "saeva  indignatio"  of  Jesus,  like 
that  of  the  First  Isaiah,  bears  witness  not 
only  to  a  fearlessness  and  zeal  for  right, 
but  to  the  essentially  passionate  tempera- 
ment of  the  man.  When  the  usual  re- 
serve of  Jesus  gives  way  we  look  in  upon 
a  heart  of  fire. 

Yet  the  finger  of  a  subtler  criticism 
traces  its  heat  even  in  his  gentlest  mood: 
the  emotions  are  the  fountains  of  all  speech 
that  rains  in  upon  the  soul;  and  in  the 
living,  speaking  Jesus  they  must  have  had 
that  intensity  which  is  the  endowment  of 
the  poet. 


[84] 


THE  HUMORIST 


THE  HUMORIST 

CERTAIN  conventions  of  Christian- 
ity have  made  its  founder  the 
gloomiest  visage  in  history;  and 
Nietzsche,  looking  upon  that  Christ,  up- 
braided him  that  he  never  laughed:  neither 
Christian  nor  Iconoclast  has  dealt  here 
with  the  real  Jesus.  The  Indignant,  the 
Man  of  Sorrows,  having  the  humanity  of 
universal  humanity,  was  the  Humorist  too. 
Indeed  such  a  nature,  so  responsive,  so 
subtle,  so  rich  in  emotions,  in  imagination, 
in  understanding  of  his  fellow-men,  would 
have  been  an  anomaly  had  it  marked  and 
felt  only  the  tragedy,  never  the  comedy, 
of  the  incongruous.  But  we  need  not 
altogether  theorize:  a  few  of  his  jests  are 
on  record. 

According  to  the  first  chapter  of  the 
[87] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

earliest  gospel,  Jesus  founded  his  little 
order  with  a  jest:  after  some  brief  ad- 
dresses, presumably  in  the  synagogues, 
which  having  no  regular  minister  were  free 
on  the  sabbath  to  any  speaker  in  Israel 
wise  in  the  Scriptures,  Jesus  was  passing 
one  day  along  by  the  sea  of  Galilee ;  and  he 
saw  Simon  and  Andrew,  the  brother  of 
Simon,  casting  a  net  into  the  sea,  for 
they  were  fishers.  And  Jesus  said  unto 
them,  "Come  ye  after  me,  and  I  will  make 
you  to  become  fishers  of  men"  (aAtefc 
avfyxoTrcov).  Socrates  once  playfully  used 
a  similar  figure:  "I  am  not  altogether 
unversed  in  the  art  of  catching  men" 

(OVK     d^rei/ows     otjuat     e^etv     Trpos      Qrjpav     avOptoirwv. 

Mem.  II.  6,  29),  but  without  the  pun 
which  gives  point  to  the  former.1 

The  homely  hyperboles  so  habitual  with 
him,  as  in  "If  ye  have  faith  as  a  grain  of 
mustard  seed,"  may  have  more  than  once 


i  The  pun  on  the  name  of  Peter  in  the  Greek  of  Matt. 
XVI,  reflects  the  Petrine  tendency  of  that  Gospel  and  the 
growing  "hierarchy  of  Rome,"  and  in  the  Aramaic  of 
Jesus  would  have  been  impossible. 

£88] 


THE  HUMORIST 

been  accompanied  by  a  smile,  the  differ- 
ence after  all  between  the  meaning  and 
the  humble  symbol  having  a  happy  quaint- 
ness. 

His  fancy  indulged  at  times  in  gro- 
tesque exaggerations,  which  need  but  to 
be  pictured  by  us  as  they  were  by  his 
original  auditors  to  be  recognized  at  once. 
The  picture  of  a  busybody  with  a  stick 
of  timber  in  his  eye,  solicitous  for  the 
sight  of  a  neighbor  with  a  fleck  of  dust 
in  his,  is  itself  ludicrous,  and  doubly  as  a 
type  of  the  fault-finding  hypocrite;  thus, 
also,  punctiliously  to  strain  out  the  gnat 
before  drinking  a  cup  of  wine,  only  there- 
after to  swallow  a  camel,  is  ludicrous,  and 
doubly  as  a  type  of  the  punctiliousness 
and  inconsistency  of  religious  formalists. 
Are  not  these  exactly  paralleled  in  kind 
by  the  famous 

"Parturiunt  monies,  nascitur  ridiculus  mus"  1 


i"The  mountains   are  in  labor  and  bring  forth  an 
absurd  little  mouse." 

[89] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

where  the  picture  is  also  grotesque  exag- 
geration, introduced  in  the  same  way  to 
typify  a  human  frailty.  We  smile  at  this 
line  in  Horace;  but  who  ever  smiled  at 
those  lines  of  Jesus?  I  think  the  Gali- 
lean peasants  did. 

It  was  Jesus,  too,  who  conceived  the 
desperate  anxiety  of  self-interest  in  terms 
of  the  short  man  trying  by  worrying  about 
it  to  add  a  cubit  to  his  stature — the  humor 
of  which  was  remarked  by  Beecher;  and 
we  remember  the  comparison  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  rich  man,  worming  his  way 
into  heaven,  with  the  easier  feat  of  the 
camel,  squeezing,  legs,  hump,  and  all, 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle.1 

Thus  the  Jester  could  riot  in  wild  and 


1 1  take  "eye  of  a  needle"  in  its  literal  sense,  rejecting 
on  a  number  of  grounds  the  archaeological  ingenuity  of 
those  commentators  who  assure  us  that  it  means  one  of 
the  city  gates.  This  term  of  the  comparison,  which  has 
its  parallels  in  the  proverbs  of  Arabia  and  India,  may 
have  been  current  in  Palestine  before  Jesus;  but,  if  so, 
the  mere  fact  that  he  chose  to  make  use  of  it  would 
itself  bear  testimony  to  his  sense  of  humor — the  topic 
under  discussion. 

[90] 


THE  HUMORIST 

grotesque  whimsies;  but  perhaps  oftener 
to  his  mood  was  the  delicate  humor  of  a 
gentle  realism :  the  children  in  the  market- 
place at  their  games  of  mock  funerals  and 
weddings,  chiding  their  comrades  for  not 
doing  their  mimic  roles  as  agreed;  the  dis- 
gruntled householder  roused  in  the  night 
by  an  importunate  neighbor  come  after 
bread  for  his  guest,  and  constrained  to 
open  the  door  at  last  because  the  man  kept 
up  such  a  merciless  knocking;  the  judge 
who  yielded  to  the  widow,  not  because  he 
feared  God  or  regarded  man,  but  simply 
to  get  rid  of  her  continual  coming;  the 
recipients  of  an  unwelcome  invitation  who 
straightway  began  to  make  conventional 
excuses,  especially  the  much-married  man 
who  could  not  remain  away  from  his  wife 
— how  genially  he  handled  such  themes! 
Here,  too,  the  humor  is  not  only  in  the 
picture,  but  in  the  application. 

Moreover,  he  was  alert  to  get  the  humor 
out  of  a  situation  in  actual  life,  as  exem- 
plified by  the  story  of  the  new  wine  in 
[91] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

old  bottles,  told  at  the  chief  Pharisee's 
table  at  the  expense  of  the  listeners,  where 
he  "pricked  the  bubble  of  their  assumed 
superiority." 

And  may  not  the  Knower  of  men  have 
smiled  as  he  saw  the  connoisseur  drink  the 
old  wine  and  smack  his  lips  and  say,  "That 
is  good"?  May  he  not  have  smiled  at  the 
simple  shepherd  and  the  women  who,  find- 
ing their  lost  possessions,  gleefully  called 
in  their  neighbors  to  gossip  about  it  all? — 
or  at  the  unseemly  haste  of  the  guests 
when  he  marked  how  they  chose  out  the 
chief  seats? — or  at  Martha,  cumbered 
about  much  serving,  who  would  enlist  the 
Master  against  her  sister,  apparently 
idling  at  his  feet?  May  not  a  sense  of 
humor  have  reinforced  his  appreciation  of 
the  zeal  of  the  little  Zacchaeus  with  whom 
he  decided  to  take  lodgings?  Was  there 
not  grim  humor  as  well  as  bitter  rebuke 
in  his  comment  on  those  who  think  they 
shall  be  heard  for  their  much  speaking, 
and  on  those  who  disfigure  their  faces  to 
[92] 


THE  HUMORIST 

be  seen  of  men  to  fast?  No  man  could 
look  through  human  nature,  as  Jesus 
looked  through  it,  without  smiling  some- 
times in  very  truth. 

Humor  is  as  old  as  speech.  Laughter 
rings  round  the  world.  And  even  Galilee 
had  its  mirth;  and  even  we  can  hear  it. 

The  above  paragraph  suggests  two  re- 
lated subjects:  the  adroitness  of  Jesus  in 
turning  any  situation,  even  the  most  try- 
ing, to  the  advantage  of  himself  or  his 
cause,  which  will  fall  into  the  next  chap- 
ter ;  and  the  irony  of  Jesus,  which  it  seems 
proper  to  make  a  part  of  this.1 

I  mean  an  irony  quite  like  that  of  Socra- 
tes, where  superiority,  conscious  of  its  own, 
plays  the  part  of  inferiority ;  where  knowl- 
edge pretends  the  ignorance,  where  wis- 
dom pretends  the  folly,  where  purity  pre- 
tends the  impurity  of  the  other  party  to 
the  conversation,  who  is  meanwhile  com- 


i  It  has  been  treated  in  a  masterly  fashion  by  Paulsen 
(Schopenhauer,  Hamlet,  Mephistopheles;  Anhang,  Ber- 
lin, 1900),  to  whom  I  am  under  some  obligation. 

[93] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

placently  unaware  of  the  situation  until 
the  real  master  choose  by  a  deft  stroke  to 
reveal  it.  As  Socrates  pretended  to  hum- 
ble himself  before  the  Sophists,  politicians, 
and  smart  set  of  Athens,  so  Jesus  before 
the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  of  Palestine. 

This  irony  seasons,  and  will  explain, 
many  of  his  sayings :  "They  who  are  whole 
have  no  need  of  a  physician,"  i.  e.,  you 
Pharisees  whose  lives  are  such  models  of 
ethical  and  religious  propriety,  I  can  do 
you  no  spiritual  good;  but  possibly  [in  a 
changed  tone]  with  all  your  wisdom  there 
is  something  for  you  in  the  old. word,  "I 
desire  mercy  and  not  sacrifice."  The  dif- 
ficult parable  of  the  Unjust  Steward  is 
certainly  ironical. 

Ironical,  too,  is  his  habit  of  clinching 
an  argument,  or  of  concluding  a  story 
with  a  question,  the  answer  to  which  is 
perfectly  obvious :  "Doth  not  each  of  you 
on  the  sabbath  loose  his  ox  or  his  ass  from 
the  stall  and  lead  him  away  to  watering?" 
"Whether  of  the  twain  did  the  will  of  his 
[94] 


THE  HUMORIST 

father?"  "Which  of  them  therefore  will 
love  him  most?" 

At  times  his  irony  becomes  bitter  sar- 
casm, as  in  Luke  XIII,  31ff.:  "It  can- 
not be  that  a  prophet  perish  outside  of 
Jerusalem,"  i.  e.,  as  a  prophet  I  have  a 
just  claim  to  be  murdered  in  the  Holy 
City  which  from  old  has  murdered  the 
prophets;  so  Herod  that  fox — sly  old 
villain  though  he  is — won't  have  the  pleas- 
ure of  doing  with  me  as  with  John. 

In  the  story  of  Lazarus  is  a  grim  hu- 
mor, happily  compared  by  Paulsen  with 
that  of  a  mediaeval  Dance  of  Death,  a  gro- 
tesque, ironic  politeness  in  Abraham's  non- 
chalant conversation  with  the  poor  fellow 
in  Hell,  reminding  one  of  those  gruesome 
old  pictures,  where  Death  invites  the  rich 
and  great,  who  have  fared  so  well  at  the 
table  of  life,  now  to  come  and  have  a  dance 
with  him. 

The  attitude  of  Jesus  toward  earthly 
riches  and  power  is  ironical  in  that  he 
aff ects  to  take  seriously  the  point  of  view 
[95] ' 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

of  those  who  take  these  things  so  seriously, 
as  in  answering  the  question,  "Is  it  lawful 
to  give  tribute  to  Caesar?" — itself  intro- 
duced by  the  Pharisees  and  the  Herodians 
with  an  impertinent  irony  not  lost  on  the 
quick  comprehension  of  Jesus.1  "Bring 
me  a  denarius  that  I  may  see  it,"  he  re- 
plied. And  they  brought  it.  "Whose  is 
this  image  and  superscription?"  [As  if  he 
did  not  know!]  And  they  say  unto  him, 
"Caesar's."  And  Jesus  said  unto  them, 
"Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's  [i.  e.,  you  enjoy  Rome's  civic 
protection,  and  use  her  coin,  and  should 
not  object  to  taxation]  and  unto  God" — 
here  abandoning  all  pretense  of  concern 
for  such  matters,  and  dismissing  them 


i  They  said,  "Master,  we  know  that  thou  art  true  and 
carest  not  for  anyone:  for  thou  regardest  not  the  person 
of  men,  but  of  a  truth  teachest  the  way  of  God."  This 
is  irony  toward  Jesus,  because  they  did  not  believe  it: 
they  were  mocking  him;  but  Fate,  in  thus  putting  the 
real  truth  unwittingly  into  their  mouths  of  scorn,  re- 
venged Jesus  with  its  own  irony:  it  made  their  words, 
as  unconscious  asseverators  of  fact,  mock  their  own 
egregious  complacence. 

[96] 


THE  HUMORIST 

with  eloquent  speed — "and  unto  God  the 
things  that  are  God's." 

He  saw  the  irony  in  the  rich  man's  care 
of  his  possessions,  which  are  not  only  of 
no  positive  value,  but  actual  hindrances 
to  getting  the  real  values  of  life  and  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  "The  ground  of  a 
certain  rich  man," — so  runs  one  of  his 
stories — "brought  forth  plentifully,  and 
he  reasoned  with  himself,  saying,  'What 
shall  I  do,  because  I  have  not  where  to 
bestow  my  fruits?'  And  he  said,  'This 
will  I  do :  I  will  pull  down  my  barns  and 
build  greater;  and  there  will  I  bestow  my 
corn  and  my  goods,  and  I  will  say  to  my 
soul,  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up 
for  many  years ;  take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink, 
and  be  merry!'  But  God  said  unto  him, 
'Thou  foolish  one,  this  night  is  thy  soul 
required  of  thee,  and  the  things  which 
thou  hast  prepared,  whose  shall  they  be?' 
So  he  that  layeth  up  treasure  for  himself 
and  is  not  rich  toward  God." 

He  saw  the  irony  in  his  own  end :  in  the 
[97] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Gardens  of  Gethsemane  on  the  Mount  of 
Olives,  when  the  coming  o^  the  chief 
priests  and  the  captains  of  the  temple  and 
the  elders  awoke  the  disciples  sleeping  for 
sorrow  even  as  Jesus  in  sorrow  had  come 
from  his  prayer  and  was  standing  over 
them,  he  turned  to  his  enemies;  and  to 
Judas  he  said,  "Betrayest  thou  the  Son  of 
Man  with  a  kiss?" — and  to  those  who 
seized  him,  "Are  ye  come  out  as  against 
a  robber  with  swords  and  staves?" 

And  the  bitter  irony  of  it  all  must  have 
filled  his  soul  before  the  High  Priest,  who 
believed  with  fatuous  ignorance  that  this 
man,  the  best  of  his  race,  must  perish,  lest 
the  whole  ancient  order  and  all  righteous- 
ness be  undone;  and  before  Pilate  who, 
possessing  the  power  of  this  world,  was 
yet  so  powerless  against  the  spiritual  King 
of  the  Jews,  to  whom  Jesus  vouchsafed 
only  the  laconic  "Thou  sayest,"  as  the 
irony  of  the  situation  compelled  him  to  an 
irony  of  attitude  toward  it.  The  bitter 
irony  of  it  all  must  have  filled  his  soul 
[98] 


THE  HUMORIST 

under  the  jeers  and  the  scourging  in  the 
house  of  Caiaphas,  under  the  crucifixion 
on  the  hill — until  his  broken  spirit  joined 
the  defeated  mortality  of  yesterday's  twice 
ten  thousand  years  with  the  despairing  cry, 
"My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  for- 
saken me!" 

Indeed,  the  irony  of  Jesus  has  been  suc- 
ceeded by  the  irony  of  history:  as  Jesus 
mocked  the  sin,  weakness,  and  folly  of 
Time,  so  has  Time  in  its  sin,  weakness, 
and  folly  mocked  Jesus.  It  preferred 
Barabbas,  the  destroyer,  to  him,  the  re- 
deemer ;  it  crucified  the  most  honest  of  men 
between  two  thieves.1  And  thereafter  it 
made  the  lover  a  tyrant;  him  who  would 
suffer  the  little  children  to  come  unto  his 
bosom  it  transformed  into  the  fiend  that 
whipped  them  into  Hell;  his  spiritual  in- 


iBut  in  the  ironical  inscription,  "The  King  of  the 
Jews,"  Fate  again,  by  the  same  subtlety  as  noted  in  the 
remark  of  the  Herodians,  did  revenge  Jesus:  it  made 
those  who  set  it  up  tell  the  truth  unwittingly  in  their 
very  mockery  at  what  was  but  their  own  dull  misun- 
derstanding thereof. 

[99] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

tuitions  it  parodied  in  the  vast  systems  of 
the  theologizing  intellect;  discipleship  to 
him,  which  he  said  (or  someone  speaking 
in  his  spirit  said)  was  in  loving  one  an- 
other, it  made  dependent  upon  a  meta- 
physical "credo  quia  absurdum."  The 
Brother  of  Peace  it  made  the  source  of  one 
half  and  the  excuse  of  the  other  half  of  the 
wars  of  the  East  and  West  and  North  and 
South;  and  the  rejecter  of  all  earthly 
goods,  the  contemner  of  all  earthly  mag- 
nificence, the  way-faring  preacher  in  san- 
dals and  girdle,  it  gave  over  to  be  repre- 
sented and  defended  by  Pontiff  and 
Prince,  clad  in  robes  of  cardinal  and  pur- 
ple and  dwelling  in  palaces  of  marble  and 
of  gold. 


1100] 


THE  ALERT 


THE   ALERT 

THE  poetical  mind  is  eminently  alive, 
not  only  quick  to  see,  but  quick  to 
take  advantage.  Though  prover- 
bially abstracted  from  the  world — or  what 
the  unconscious  complacency  of  many  men 
calls  the  world — the  poet  knows  where  he 
is  and  what  to  do.  His  intellectual  em- 
barrassments are  most  brief,  his  resources 
most  abounding,  his  repartees  unexpected 
and  dangerous.  The  poet  in  Joan  of  Arc 
confounded  the  brutal  ecclesiastics  who  ex- 
amined her,  no  less  than  the  heroine  in  her 
confounded  the  executioners  and  the  mob 
which  watched  the  transfigured  white  girl 
in  the  flames.  "Did  not  the  archangel 
Michael  appear  unto  thee  all  naked?"  ob- 
scenely insinuated  a  priestly  official;  and 
"Of  a  truth,"  replied  La  Pucelle,  "Wot 
[103] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

ye  not  that  God  who  clothes  the  flowers  of 
the  valleys  can  find  raiment  for  his  mes- 
senger?" The  unhappy  English  poet, 
on  trial  in  a  sordid  London  court-room, 
degraded,  hopelessly  in  the  wrong,  could 
yet  force  cheers  from  the  floor  by  his 
trenchant  replies  to  the  stolid  lawyers  who 
cross-examined.  And  when  a  poet  takes 
up  his  pen  to  fight,  his  critics  look  out, 
for  he  is  apt  to  be  an  alert  man  of  affairs 
no  less  than  a  dreamer  of  dreams.  There 
are  many  indications  of  such  alertness  in 
the  Poet  of  Galilee.  His  intellectual  side 
has  not  always  been  sufficiently  recognized. 
He  had  something  of  the  readiness  of  the 
Greek  intellect,  of  Plato,  Socrates,  and  the 
Sophists,  a  quality  not  present  to  such  a 
degree  in  the  Hebrew  prophets,  or  in  Zoro- 
aster, or  in  Buddha,  who  were  very  dif- 
ferent types  indeed;  and  present  perhaps 
in  Mohammed,  not  as  poet,  the  man  of 
words,  but  as  general,  the  man  of  action. 
His  reformer-soul  put  him  in  hard  case 
with  his  countrymen.  He  knew  opposi- 
[104] 


THE  ALERT 

tion,  from  the  pettiness  of  provincial  scribe 
to  the  domineering  of  Jewish  High  Priest 
and  Roman  Procurator.  We  can  conceive 
of  a  Jesus  who  would  have  answered  ever 
with  a  magnificent  look  of  godlike  silence 
and  turned  away;  so,  indeed,  at  times  we 
may  be  sure  he  did  answer.  But  not 
always ;  the  historic  Jesus  of  Nazareth  did 
not  always  let  slip  his  opportunity,  nor 
abrogate  his  power  to  make  a  home  thrust, 
if  it  was  vital  to  his  propaganda. 

In  the  Synoptics  we  read  of  several 
efforts  to  entrap  him:  the  Pharisees,  Sad- 
ducees,  or  Herodians  went  and  took  coun- 
sel how  they  might  ensnare  him  in  his  talk, 
apropos  of  the  tribute  money,  or  of  the 
proper  punishment  of  an  adulteress,  or  of 
marriages  in  Heaven,  or  of  other  things 
on  which  they  trusted  he  would  commit 
himself  to  his  hurt  in  the  eyes  of  the 
people;  and  one  has  but  to  recall  his  an- 
swers to  see  how  he  perceived  their  crafti- 
ness, and  how  no  man  was  able  to  answer 
him  a  word,  how  even  his  enemies  recog- 
[105] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

nized  his  adroitness  and  durst  not  there- 
after ask  him  any  question.  In  a  contest 
of  wits  he  was  a  genius  at  fence,  parry  or 
thrust.  He  was  a  master  of  situations 
that  would  have  embarrassed  many  men 
not  less  sure  of  their  cause,  but  less  sure 
of  the  circumstances  and  of  themselves. 
He  not  only  saw  directly  how  the  matter 
stood,  with  that  same  insight  which  in 
spiritual  issues  made  him  a  seer,  but  he  had 
the  presence  of  mind  to  handle  it  with 
effect,  and  at  times  with  eloquence  and 
dramatic  eclat — a  presence  of  mind  which, 
had  not  other  elements  in  his  character  in- 
terposed, might  have  made  him  a  political 
force  in  the  forum  or  a  general  in  the 
field.1 

Sometimes  he  replied,  like  Lincoln,  with 
a  story;  sometimes,  like  Socrates,  with  the 


lAnd  understanding  human  nature  as  he  did,  he  was 
also  not  without  a  certain  practical  sagacity.  At  least 
there  is  something  politic  in  the  instruction  to  the 
twelve,  for  their  journey,  "Be  ye  wise  as  serpents  and 
harmless  as  doves."  But  his  moral  earnestness  forbade 
him  to  employ  much  conciliation  and  compromise. 

[106] 


THE  ALERT 

irony  noted  above;  sometimes  with  the 
formulation  of  a  dilemma,  sometimes  with 
all  three,  as  in  Matthew  XXI,  23-32: 
"And  when  he  was  come  into  the  temple, 
the  chief  priests  and  the  elders  of  the  peo- 
ple came  unto  him  as  he  was  teaching,  and 
said,  'By  what  authority  doest  thou  these 
things?  and  who  gave  thee  this  authority?' 
And  Jesus  answered  and  said  unto  them, 
'I  also  will  ask  you  one  question,  which 
if  ye  tell  me,  I  likewise  will  tell  you  by 
what  authority  I  do  these  things.  The 
baptism  of  John,  whence  was  it?  from 
heaven  or  from  men  V  And  they  reasoned 
with  themselves,  saying,  'If  we  shall  say; 
from  Heaven,  he  will  say  unto  us,  "Why 
then  did  ye  not  believe  him?"  But  if  we 
shall  say  from  men,  we  fear  the  multi- 
tude; for  all  hold  John  as  a  prophet.' 
And  they  answered  Jesus,  and  said,  'We 
know  not/  He  also  said  unto  them, 
'Neither  tell  I  you  by  what  authority  I  do 
these  things.  But  what  think  ye?  A 
man  had  two  sons,  and  he  came  to  the 
[107] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

first,  and  said,  "Son,  go  work  to-day  in 
the  vineyard."  And  he  answered,  and 
said,  "I  will  not;"  but  afterward,  he  re- 
pented himself,  and  went.  And  he  came 
to  the  second,  and  said  likewise.  And  he 
answered,  and  said,  "I  go,  sir,"  and  went 
not.  Whether  of  the  twain  did  the  will 
of  his  father?'  They  say,  'The  first.' 
Jesus  saith  unto  them,  'Verily  I  say  unto 
you  that  the  publicans  and  the  harlots  go 
into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  you. 
For  John  came  unto  you  in  the  way  of 
righteousness,  and  ye  believed  him  not: 
but  the  publicans  and  the  harlots  believed 
him:  and  ye,  when  ye  saw  it,  did  not  even 
repent  yourselves  afterward,  that  ye 
might  believe  him/ ' 

His  use  of  the  dilemma  is  a  part  of  an 
antithetical  habit  of  thought,  illustrated 
in  his  fondness  for  briefly  put  alternatives 
and  contrasts,  when  he  supplemented  the 
pronouncements  of  intuition  by  the  argu- 
ments of  the  discursive  reason:  two  men 
in  the  field,  one  taken,  the  other  left;  ten 
[108] 


THE  ALERT 

virgins,  five  wise  and  five  f polish;  the 
house  on  the  rock  and  the  house  on  the 
sand;  John,  fasting,  who,  as  they  say, 
hath  a  devil,  and  the  Son  of  Man,  eating 
and  drinking,  whom  they  call  a  glutton 
and  a  wine-bibber ;  the  saving  and  the  kill- 
ing of  life  on  the  sabbath ;  God  and  Mam- 
mon— alternatives  usually  symbolic  ex- 
pressions of  the  everlasting  alternatives, 
light  and  darkness,  good  and  evil, — the 
main  subject  matter  of  Jesus  and  of  all 
dialecticians  of  the  soul. 

Only  once  in  his  conversation  does  he 
seem  to  have  been  outwitted,  and  then  not 
by  one  of  the  mighty  that  sat  on  Moses' 
seat,  but  by  one  of  the  humble  far  away. 
On  his  visit  to  the  lost  sheep  of  Israel  on 
the  borders  of  Tyre  and  Sidon,  a  woman, 
a  Gentile,  a  Syrophoenician  by  race,  came 
to  the  house  where  the  weary  man  had 
hid  himself,  and  fell  down  at  his  feet, 
and  besought  him  that  he  would  cast  forth 
a  devil  out  of  her  daughter.  And  he  said 
unto  her,  with  what  to  western  ears  seems 
[109] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

a  transient  touch  of  the  racial  exclusive- 
ness  of  the  ancient  Jew,  "Let  the  children 
first  be  filled:  for  it  is  not  meet  to  take 
the  children's  bread  and  cast  it  to  the 
dogs."  But  her  anguish  found  her  a  bet- 
ter word,  and  she  said  unto  him,  "Yea, 
Lord;  even  the  dogs  under  the  table  eat 
of  the  children's  crumbs."  And  the  keen, 
no  less  than  the  tender  man  within  him 
was  roused,  and  he  said  unto  her,  with 
instant  approval  of  her  speech,  and  cheer 
for  her  grief:  "For  this  saying  go  thy 
way;  the  devil  is  gone  out  of  thy  daugh- 
ter." 

His  readiness  in  bending  his  wit  to  a 
situation  suggests  his  readiness  in  bend- 
ing a  situation  to  his  wit.  He  would  often 
seize  on  some  object  immediately  at  hand 
to  point  his  moral  or  adorn  his  tale;  such 
must  be  the  force  of  the  pronoun  "this" 
in  "Ye  shall  say  unto  this  mountain,  'Be 
thou  taken  up/"  as  Jesus  passed  with 
his  disciples  one  morning  from  Bethany 
toward  Jerusalem  along  the  foot  of  the 

[no] 


THE  ALERT. 

Mount  of  Olives;  and  of  the  same  pro- 
noun in  "Ye  would  say  unto  this  syca- 
mine tree,  'Be  thou  rooted  up,  and  be  thou 
planted  in  the  sea/  "  the  sycamine  waving 
even  there  not  far  from  the  rippling  beach 
of  Gennesaret.  It  was  immediately  after 
his  melancholy  conversation  with  the  rich 
young  man,  who  asked  what  he  should  do 
to  inherit  eternal  life  and  then  made  the 
great  refusal — "il  gran  rifiuto" — going 
away  sorrowful,  that  Jesus  looked  round 
about  at  the  puzzled  and  grieved  disciples 
and  commented,  "How  hardly  shall  they 
that  have  riches  enter  into  the  Kingdom 
of  God  1"  The  invitation  to  the  fishermen 
to  become  fishers  of  men,  already  instanced 
as  illustrating  the  Humorist,  may  also  be 
instanced  here.  And  men  will  not  forget 
how  once  he  answered  the  query,  "Who, 
then,  is  greatest  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven?" — one  of  those  several  queries, 
by  the  way,  that  show  wherein  the  dis- 
ciples really  failed  to  appreciate  their 
Master's  teachings — how  forthwith  he 
[111] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

called  to  him  a  little  child  and  set  him  in 
the  midst  of  them,  a  living,  breathing 
symbol  of  his  thought,  and  said,  ''Verily 
I  say  unto  you,  except  ye  turn  and  become 
as  little  children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter 
into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  And  when 
he  bade  those  of  little  faith  to  consider  the 
lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grew,  toiling 
not  as  men,  nor  spinning  as  women,  yet 
in  their  array  more  beautiful  than  Solo- 
mon in  all  his  glory,  I  know  that  the  same 
lilies  nodded  round  him  out  of  the  grass, 
gleaming  with  speckled  white  and  gold 
in  the  same  sunlight  that  fell  across  the 
Poet's  face. 


[112] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

THE   stories   of  Jesus   furnish  by- 
words for  conversation  and  litera- 
ture ;  but  their  movement  and  color 
and  passion  are  too  seldom  felt:    they 
have  been  added  to  the  conventionalities; 
hence  their  significance  for  the  mind  of 
Jesus  may  be  overlooked.     They  bear  wit- 
ness to  a  teeming,  creative  brain.    When 
Jesus  walked  by  the  lake  or  mountain,  and 
the   crowds   gathered,   and  he  began  to 
speak  to  them  in  parables,  where  did  he 
get   his   abundant   supplies? — were   they 
casual  inventions  of  the  moment? — had  the 
artist  before  worked  over  them  in  secret? 
—what  personal  observation,  experience, 
or  folk-gossip  or  reading  suggested  this 
story  or  that? — did  he  bring  them  to  their 
present  perfection  by  successive  retelling 
[115] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

and  remodeling,  like  the  modern  speaker 
with  his  favorite  anecdotes? — with  what 
tones,  gestures,  pauses,  did  thfe  story-teller 
emphasize  the  pageantry  of  his  fancy  for 
his  oriental  hearers,  those  proverbial  lovers 
of  stories?  To  these  things  no  man  will 
ever  reply.  But  answers  are  not  always 
of  chief  moment.  Often  a  question  will 
do  more  to  arouse  thought  than  an  an- 
swer 1 — a  realization  that  problems  exist, 
a  stimulation  of  curiosity,  when  we  begin 
to  understand  because  we  begin  to  be 
properly  astonished. 

These  stories  came  out  of  a  teeming, 
creative  brain  that  spoke  to  the  living;  and 
as  such  it  is  well  to  recognize  their  posi- 
tion in  the  written  records  of  the  race, 
among  the  fables,  allegories,  and  apo- 
logues that  human  ingenuity  has  wrought 
out  to  illustrate  a  point  or  to  teacK  a  les- 
son. Someone  should  write  a  book  com- 


i  So  Ibsen  conceived  it  his  mission  to  question  and  not 
to  answer:    "Jeg  sporger  heist;  mit  kald  er  ej  at  svare." 

[116] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

paring  in  their  art  and  purpose  the  stories 
of  Jesus  with  the  Old  Testament  parables 
(as  that  of  the  vineyard  in  Isaiah  V,  elab- 
orated by  Jesus),  and  the  Old  Testament 
fables  (those  of  vegetable  life  *  in  Judges 
IX,  8-15,  and  II  Kings  XIV,  9)  with 
the  parables  of  Buddha  and  the  Talmud, 
with  the  fables  of  the  Hitopadesa  and 
j3Bsop,  with  the  myths  and  parables  of 
Plato,  with  the  allegory  of  Hercules  at 
the  cross-roads  of  Prodicus,  with  the 
homely  apologues  of  republican  Rome, 
etc.  His  words  begin  to  be  examined  by 
the  Department  of  Comparative  Religion ; 
they  still  await  examination  by  the  De- 
partment of  Comparative  Literature. 

If,  on  the  one  hand,  the  stories  of  Jesus 
are  fresh  creations,  on  the  other  hand  as  a 
type  and  method  they  have  not  only  gen- 
eral analogies  among  other  peoples,  but 
closer  parallels  among  his  own  people  and 


i  The  beast  fable  is  not  found  in  the  Old  Testament. 

[117] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

in  his  own  time  than  a  Christian  public 
unfamiliar  with  Rabbinical  }ore  usually 
suspects. 

But  they  concern  us  now  only  in  the 
former  aspect,  as  stories  illustrating  spir- 
itual truths,  as  the  manifest  products  of 
one  mind,  one  artist,  one  creator.  They 
belong  to  the  world's  "little  masterpieces 
of  fiction."  Not  only  have  they  delighted 
the  populace,  but  they  have  satisfied  the 
severe  standards  of  the  Academicians. 
The  clearness  of  outline  and  grace  of 
form,  so  unlike  anything  in  ancient  He- 
brew literature,  is  perhaps  the  most  nota- 
ble manifestation  of  that  Hellenic  quality; 
in  the  mind  of  Jesus  which  we  have  al- 
ready noted  more  than  once.  Jesus  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  artist  the  Jewish  race 
has  produced. 

With  wonderful  economy  of  effort  he 
sets  his  characters  before  us  as  living  men 
and  women.  His  device  is  not  to  de- 
scribe, but  to  show  them  doing  or  speak- 
[118] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

ing,  whether  it  be  the  Good  Samaritan 
binding  up  the  wayfarer's  wounds,  or  the 
shepherd  coming  home  rejoicing  with  the 
lost  sheep  on  his  shoulder,  or  the  woman 
sweeping  her  house,  or  the  Unjust  Stew- 
ard with  his  account  books,  or  Lazarus 
begging  Father  Abraham  to  dip  a  finger- 
tip in  water  and  cool  his  tongue.  With 
the  realistic  exactness  of  one  reporting 
an  incident  out  of  his  own  experience,  he 
mentions  now  one,  now  another  character- 
istic detail  such  as  only  a  poetic  imagina- 
tion would  emphasize.  With  him  it  is  not 
simply  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  but  a 
grain  of  mustard  seed  that  a  man  took  and 
cast  into  his  garden,  and  it  grew  and  be- 
came a  tree  and  the  birds  of  the  heavens 
came  and  lodged  in  the  branches  thereof. 
Even  in  the  brief  mention  of  the  woman 
making  bread,  he  tells  us  she  hid  the  leaven 
not  simply  in  the  meal,  but  in  three  meas- 
ures of  meal — and  that  makes  the  differ- 
ence between  a  lay-figure  and  an  actual 
[119] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

housewife.  It  is  just  these  ^apparently 
trivial  touches  that  betray  the  born  story- 
teller. 

Again,  his  people  are  always  repre- 
sented as  occupied  with  something  inter- 
esting, something  in  which  they  are  them- 
selves vitally  interested — whether  it  be 
buying  land  to  make  sure  of  a  treasure 
buried  there,  or  hunting  for  a  lost  sheep, 
or  building  a  house,  or  guiding  the  plow — 
usually  something  that  his  peasant  com- 
panions or  groups  of  chance  listeners 
would  have  found  particularly  interesting, 
as  a  part  of  their  own  world.  Though 
Jesus  tells  the  story  of  a  king  and  his 
army,  and  of  a  rich  merchant  and  his  pearl, 
most  of  his  inventions  concern  the  homely 
activities  of  fisher,  and  vine-dresser,  and 
shepherd,  or  the  quite  familiar,  if  learned, 
professions  of  scribe  and  judge. 

It  is  part  of  that  homeliness  that  runs 
through  so  much  of  his  imagery,  and  that 
doubtless  characterized  his  speech,  noun, 
[120] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

verb,  and  adjective,  in  the  original  Ara- 
maic never  to  be  restored. 

Near  to  the  folk  also  was  his  constant 
use  of  what  our  Latin  grammar  calls 
"direct  discourse" — the  lively  dramatic 
method  of  the  Scotch  cotter  or  Irish  poli- 
tician, which  is  lost  to  the  more  elaborate 
syntax  of  polite  society.  He  reports  the 
householder,  which  went  out  at  different 
hours  of  the  day  to  hire  more  laborers  into 
his  vineyard,  as  in  actual  conversation  in 
the  market-place;  he  does  not  tell  us  the 
Prodigal  said  he  would  arise  and  go  to 
his  father,  but  he  lets  us  overhear  the 
Prodigal's  own  spoken  resolve. 

Near  to  the  folk,  again,  are  his  repeti- 
tions, like  those  familiar  in  Homer  and  in 
ballad  poetry,  found  in  the  Gospel  narra- 
tives about  Jesus  as  well  (e.  g.,  Luke 
XIX,  31-34) ,  and  in  all  primitive  recitals : 
as  "Enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord" 
in  the  parable  of  the  Talents ;  and  "I  have 
sinned  against  heaven,"  etc.,  of  the  Prod- 
Cm] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

igal  Son;  and  "I  pray  thee  have  me  ex- 
cused," in  the  parable  of  the  Invitations: 
each  repeated  with  the  simple  directness 
of  an  old  folk-tale. 

His  characters  belong  to  the  literature 
of  the  world,  even  with  the  more  devel- 
oped creations  of  so-called  secular  letters, 
with  Thersites,  Nestor,  Achilles,  with  Pa- 
olo and  Francesca,  the  Canterbury  Pil- 
grims, and  Shakespeare's  Theater. 

The  background  is  but  lightly  drawn, 
even  in  such  a  vivid  scene  as  the  Prodigal 
feeding  the  swine;  or  it  is  omitted  alto- 
gether, where,  however,  the  convincing  re- 
ality of  the  actors  suggests  it  so  truly  that 
we  are  surprised  to  find  on  rereading  that 
our  imaginations  have  supplied  so  much. 
Here  again  is  seen  the  magic  of  the  artist : 
it  is  not  what  his  imagination  does  for 
us,  so  much  as  what  it  is  able  to  make  our 
imaginations  do  for  ourselves,  that  distin- 
guishes from  the  dauber  or  poetaster,  the 
painter  or  poet  whom  we  love  for  making 
us  so  gloriously  competent. 
[122] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

Hence  the  wearisome  inanity  of  most 
efforts  to  fill  in  the  parables  by  para- 
phrase. Yet  our  world — our  customs,  our 
tastes,  the  very  look  of  our  fields  and 
houses  and  markets,  our  occidental  sky 
itself — is  so  different  that  imagination, 
always  making  use  of  memory,  may  some- 
times go  astray ;  and  a  work  of  such  wide 
and  exact  archaeological  information,  with 
such  intelligent  sympathy  and  such  sweet 
quaintness  of  manner  as  De  Gelijkenissen 
van  het  Evangelic l  of  Dr.  Koetsveld, 
hausvater,  pastor,  and  scholar,  is  a  delight- 
ful help  and  a  welcome  gift  to  any  friend 
of  Jesus:  he  brings  back  to  us  the  world 
that  was  about  Jesus,  when  the  Poet  of 
Galilee  spoke  to  his  villagers  from  boat 
or  hillside ;  and  to  Jesus'  allusions  he  gives 
for  us  something  of  the  significance  they 
had  for  his  countrymen. 

One  might  expect  the  realistic  habit  that 
adds  so  many  little  touches  of  accurate  de- 


i  Utrecht,  1886.    I  doubt  if  the  work  exists  in  trans- 
lation. 

[123] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

tail  would  have  led  him  to  locate,  as  is  so 
common  in  folk-lore  and  legend,  his  stories 
in  some  appropriate  place,  feigning,  for 
instance,  that  the  sower  went  forth  to  sow 
in  the  fields  back  of  Capernaum,  or  that 
the  Prodigal  wandered  from  a  house  in 
Nazareth  to  the  rich  Roman  city  on  the 
coast,  or  that  the  virgins  were  the  daugh- 
ters of  Cana;  but  he  is  thus  definite  only 
in  the  story  of  the  man  who  was  going 
down  to  Jericho.  Moreover,  his  charac- 
ters are  unnamed,  save  the  beggar  on 
Abraham's  bosom,  who  may  have  been 
named  by  the  tradition  after  the  Lazarus 
whom  Jesus  was  reputed  to  have  raised 
from  the  dead.  And  in  this  way  his  sto- 
ries, with  all  their  simple  realism,  acquire 
something  of  that  remoteness  and  mystery 
characteristic  of  fairy  tales,  which  usually 
tell  of  what  happened  somewhere,  once 
upon  a  time,  to  some  certain  prince,  or 
maiden,  or  forest  child  whose  names  we 
shall  never  know.  The  result  is  for  us 
not  unhappy:  the  literary  instinct  of  men 
[124] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

has  long  since  devised  from  out  the  stories 
of  Jesus  signatures  more  significant  and 
pretty  than  proper  names :  The  Vineyard, 
The  Prodigal  Son,  The  Ten  Virgins,  The 
Talents,  the  Good  Samaritan. 

The  character  of  his  materials — the  per- 
sonages and  incidents — and  his  manner  of 
arranging  and  setting  them  forth  offer 
beautiful  evidence  of  Jesus'  power  to  play 
upon  the  human  heart.  So  many-sided 
and  so  elusive  is  his  personality  that  his 
critic  is  constantly  tempted  to  readjust 
the  emphasis  or  alter  the  treatment  of 
chapter  and  paragraph.  Indeed,  Jesus' 
power  over  the  human  heart  is  perhaps  his 
power  above  all  other  powers  as  poet;  and 
I  can  imagine  a  discussion  of  the  Poet  of 
Galilee  which  might  be  in  effect  but  an 
analysis  and  exposition  of  this  truth.  Not 
that  such  a  discussion  would  necessarily 
repudiate  any  of  the  ideas  in  these  pages ; 
but  that  it  might  set  some  of  them  in 
clearer  relations  and  in  a  clearer  light. 
It  is  certain  at  least  that  the  power  over  the 
[125] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

human  heart  he  possessed  as  j  few  even  of 
the  greatest  artists  who  so  far  excelled 
him  in  complexity  and  ingenuity  of  form, 
and  in  quantity  and  variety  of  production. 

But  these  stories  exist  not  for  them- 
selves alone;  like  all  great  art,  they  have 
a  meaning  beyond  themselves.  Each  ex- 
ists for  an  idea;  they  all  illustrate  the 
ethical  or  religious  principles  that  fired  the 
imagination  of  the  Poet  of  Galilee;  and, 
despite  certain  tendencies  in  modern  crit- 
icism and  art,  it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  the  love  of  goodness  and  the  love  of 
God  have  been  through  the  ages  and  will 
still  be  in  the  ages  to  come  among  the 
passions  and  themes  of  the  creative  mind. 

The  fitness  of  the  stories  as  illustrations 
is  quite  independent  of  their  excellence  as 
narrative  compositions. 

They  are  a  part  of  the  glowing  con- 

creteness  of  a  poet's  thinking;  but  in  this 

they  are  sometimes  misunderstood.     The 

parable  of  the  Sower  (with  one  or  two 

[126] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

others)  is  really  an  allegory,  where  each 
element  in  the  story  is  symbolic  of  an  ele- 
ment in  the  thought  of  the  speaker;  "it 
gives  us,"  says  Menzies,1  "under  a  thin 
disguise  the  experience  of  Jesus  as  a 
preacher;"  though  the  correspondences 
are  confused  in  the  explanation  which  the 
Evangelists  make  Jesus  give  privately  to 
his  disciples. 

But  this  is  not  their  usual  character. 
They  are  similes.  In  some  this  is  form- 
ally obvious:  "The  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  like  a  woman,"  etc.;  "Everyone  there- 
fore which  heareth  these  words  of  mine, 
and  doeth  them,  shall  be  likened  unto  a 
wise  man,  which  built  his  house  upon  the 
rock,"  etc.  But  even  the  longest,  The 
Prodigal  Son,  is,  in  relation  to  the  thought 
illustrated,  a  simile.  The  point  of  com- 
parison is  that  God  forgives  a  repentant 
soul  as  a  human  father  a  son.  The  vivid 


The  Earliest  Gospel,  p.  108. 

[127] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

details — the  patrimony,  the  Pandering  to 
a  far  country,1  the  swine,  the  fatted  calf, 
the  ring  and  the  robe — but  complete  and 
vitalize  the  picture;  they  have  not  more 
symbolic  meaning  than  the  details  of  a 
Homeric  simile.  In  either  poet  there  is 
but  one  point  of  comparison ;  in  either  case 
the  poet  makes  the  comparison  interesting 
and  effective  by  dwelling  on  the  inde- 
pendent characteristics  of  the  material 
which  furnishes  the  illustration. 

Thus  Jesus  is  not  to  be  held  responsible 
for  the  morality  of  people  in  these  stories : 
neither  for  the  harshness  of  the  king  that 
bade  the  man  who  owed  him  ten  thousand 
talents  to  be  sold  with  his  wife,  and  his 
children,  and  all  he  had;  nor  for  the  injus- 
tice of  the  householder  who  gave  the  labor- 
ers of  the  eleventh  hour  as  good  a  wage 
as  those  who  had  borne  the  scorching  heat 
of  the  day;  nor  for  the  thrift  of  the 
gleeful,  sly  fellow  that  found  a  treasure 


i  Possibly  this  might  symbolize  a  long  journey  from 
the  goodness  of  God,  but  it  need  not  here. 

[128] 


THE  STORY-TELLER 

hid  in  a  field  and  bought  the  field  without 
letting  the  man  who  sold  it  know  why. 
In  the  same  way  he  is  not  always  careful 
of  literal  probability,  as  possibly  in  the 
story  of  a  certain  king  which  made  a  mar- 
riage feast  for  his  sons,  though  the  more 
intimately  we  acquaint  ourselves  with  Je- 
sus, the  more  we  appreciate  how  his  utter- 
ances abound  in  accurate  knowledge  of 
the  customs  and  ways  of  his  folk  and 
times.  What  he  chiefly  desires  is  that 
these  stories  furnish  him  with  a  point  to 
his  purpose. 

And  Jesus,  leaving  the  moral  to  take 
hold  as  it  might,  was  loath  to  tag  his 
parables  with  elucidations.  He  had  too 
much  literary  taste :  as  artist  he  loved  the 
eloquence  of  suppression,  silence,  stopping 
short.  He  had  too  much  cleverness:  he 
knew  human  nature  too  well ;  he  knew  the 
greater  force  of  a  point  when  the  listener 
can  catch  it  for  himself;  and  though  the 
quick-witted  Pharisees  and  their  kind 
seem  to  have  got  his  drift  easily  enough, 
[129] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

he  was,  as  we  read,  chagrined  at  the  ob- 
tuseness  of  his  disciples  in  wanting  glosses, 
and  would  have  been  chagrined  at  those 
glosses  which,  as  seems  likely,  the  Apos- 
tolic age  was  afterwards  prone  to  put  into 
his  mouth.  Moreover,  he  was  too  adroit: 
simple  parabolic  teaching  "enabled  him  to 
avoid  harsh  contradictions  of  the  hopes 
cherished  by  his  countrymen,  and  to  in- 
sinuate into  their  minds  his  own  spiritual 
views,"  1  without  unduly  antagonizing. 

But  certainly  he  desired  to  be  under- 
stood. Apparently  the  Apostolic  age, 
wondering  why  not  more  of  those  who 
heard  Jesus  were  converted,  sought  an  ex- 
planation in  the  fact  that  he  spoke  in 
parables,  so  that,  in  the  bitter  words  of 
Isaiah, 

"Seeing,  they  may  not  see; 
And  hearing,  they  may  not  understand." 

This  contradicts  the  nature  of  Jesus:  he 
no  more  intended  to  hide  his  thought  un- 


iMenzies,  The  Earliest  Gospel,  p.  116. 

[130] 


-THE  STORY-TELLER 

der  a  mystification  than  he  advised  hiding 
a  lamp  under  a  bushel. 

These  observations  have  touched  on  the 
parables,  first,  simply  as  inventions  of  a 
unique  story-telling  gift,  and,  second,  as 
concrete  symbols  of  spiritual  ideas,  ac- 
cording to  the  familiar  function  of  the 
poet  as  discoverer  of  analogies  between 
matter  and  spirit.  A  third  aspect  of  their 
poetry  concerns  the  quality  of  those  ideas 
themselves ;  but  any  analysis  of  the  under- 
lying truths  of  the  parables  must  be  left 
until  the  years  make  me  wiser  for  the  task. 
It  seems  indubitable  that  no  other  body 
of  poetry  so  slight  in  quantity  ever  con- 
tained teachings  of  equal  loftiness  and 
equal  scope. 


[131] 


THE  SAYER 


THE  SAYER 

THE  preceding  chapters  have  inevi- 
tably implied  Jesus'  mastery  of  ex- 
pression; indeed,  those  on  "The 
Humorist"  and  "The  Story-teller"  were 
compelled  directly  to  allude  to  it  in  several 
of  its  characteristics.  But  it  calls  for  the 
emphasis  of  a  separate  discussion:  had  the 
intellectuality,  the  insight,  the  imagina- 
tion, the  moods  of  Jesus  burned  themselves 
out  within  a  speechless  soul,  he  would 
never  have  become  a  flame  upon  the  moun- 
tains. 

Gifts  great  as  his  are  never  absolutely 
tongue-tied:  they  always  to  some  degree 
force  or  awaken  words,  as  it  is  their  nature 
to  crave  expression  of  themselves  to  oth- 
ers. In  so  far  "always  the  seer  is  the 
sayer."  Yet  the  gift  of  speech  is  not 
[135] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

necessarily  commensurate  with  other  gifts. 
It  is  possible  that,  of  two  men  equally 
sensitive  to  beauty,  truth,  and  goodness, 
one  goes  under  to  oblivion,  while  the  other 
lives  to  exert  a  wide  influence  and  to  com- 
pel a  splendid  renown.  There  are  those 
who  die  with  all  their  music  in  them. 
Two  men  with  such  similar  gifts  and  op- 
posite fates  have  I  known.  For  several 
years  of  an  upland  boyhood  it  was  my 
rare  privilege  to  be  almost  daily  with  an 
aged  clergyman  whose  life  began  with  the 
wonderful  century.  Thomas  Stone  (un- 
der the  familiar  maples  and  elms  of  whose 
revisited  house  I  am  writing  this  book) 
had  been  among  the  first,  as  he  was  among 
the  last,  of  the  New  England  Transcen- 
dentalists.  From  his  first  work,  Sermons 
on  War,  printed  far  back  in  1828,  down 
to  his  last  words  of  faith  on  his  death-bed 
in  1895,  and  through  the  long  years  be- 
tween of  earnest  affiliation  with  the  spirit- 
ual movements  of  and  ahead  of  his  time, 
he  was  in  temperament  prophet  and  seer. 
[136] 


THE  SAYER 

He  was  the  spiritual,  as  he  was  the  physi- 
cal, neighbor  of  Emerson,  the  intimate 
friend  of  whom  he  told  me  so  much.  He 
saw  the  same  stars  through  the  same  trees. 
But  it  was  denied  him,  as  he  often  re- 
marked in  quiet  reminiscence,  to  find  the 
fit  words ;  he  could  not  speak  out  loud  and 
bold,  like  his  celebrated  kinsman.  Those 
who  knew  him  remember ;  but  his  volumes, 
pleasingly  and  not  greatly  written,  gather 
the  dust  in  the  second-hand  book-stores 
of  Boston,  while  Emerson's  are  sent  round 
and  round  the  world.  This  enormous  dif- 
ference in  fate  corresponds  to  no  equal 
difference  in  vision,  independence,  or  char- 
acter; but  the  mute  lips  must  perish. 
There  is  the  weakness,  no  less  than  the 
power,  of  silence.  The  seer  is  not  always 
the  sayer. 

As  a  prime  source  of  his  influence  and 
of  his  renown,  the  Galilean's  genius  for 
expression  can  hardly  be  too  much^ 
stressed,  especially  as  it  is  seldom  stressed 
at  all.  Why  is  it  that  his  words  are  quoted 
[1ST] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

on  all  tongues?  Not  alone  because  they 
have  mighty  meanings.  The  words  of 
his  mouth  equaled  the  meditations  of  his 
heart.  Adequate  speech  is  the  last  gift 
of  the  Giver  of  gifts. 

The  halting  tongue,  used  only  to  ask- 
ing for  bread,  or  to  telling  the  hour  of  the 
day,  must  halt  indeed  in  attempting  to 
speak  fittingly  of  the  speech  of  such  men. 
After  all,  only  a  poet  should  speak  of 
the  words  of  a  poet.  Why  did  not  Shel- 
ley, or  Goethe  leave  us  more  of  their 
thought  of  the  speech  of  Jesus?  Did 
they  fail  to  recognize  him  as  their  con- 
temporary, an  eternal  master  of  their  own 
eternal  stores? 

But  one  can  surmise  some  of  the  points 
they  might  have  made: 

1.  Jesus,  the  sayer,  is  the  revealer  of 
Jesus,  the  man.  He  gives  himself — 
thought  and  feeling — to  all  the  world 
with  the  frankness  of  a  child,  with  the 
frankness  and  richness  of  self-expression 
of  the  poet.  "None  tell  more  freely  their 
[138] 


THE  SAYER 

deepest  secrets  than  the  truly  great,"  says 
Nathaniel  Schmidt,  and  he  is  thinking  of 
the  Prophet  of  Nazareth. 

2.  But  he  gives  himself  without  gar- 
rulity or  violence.     His  impulse  to  com- 
municate, his  intensity  of  temperament, 
was  under  a  fine  control.     But  this  may 
not  be  the  right  word:  control  implies 
somewhat  of  plan  and  effort;  and  the  re- 
serve and  strength  of  the  phrase  of  Jesus 
depended  upon  the  natural  action  and  di- 
rection of  his  mind:  it  was  not  calculated 
or  compelled;  it  came.     The  sincerity  of 
a  great  inspiration  needs  no  course  in  rhet- 
oric as  the  propaedeutic  against  loquacity 
and  loud  tones:  on  that  side  it  takes  care 
of  itself.     Thus  the  austerity  and  power 
of  his  diction  that  wastes  no  energy  and 
never  distracts  has  its  roots  in  his  ethical 
character:  it  is  one  more  witness  to  the 
nobility  of  Jesus. 

3.  He  has  what  is  called  "finality  of  ex- 
pression," a  hackneyed  usage  which  may 
derive  a  certain  freshness,  thus  used  for 

[139] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

one  so  far  from  the  houses  of  criticism  and 
reviewers.  All  his  words  hafre  that  fine 
ultimateness  which  is  in  natural  'things, 
in  the  flowers  and  birds  and  trees — per- 
fection of  being  after  their  kind,  which, 
like  the  flowers  in  their  perfection,  are  so 
beautifully  adjusted  to  the  soul  of  man 
that  he  delights  in  them  long  before  he 
appreciates  the  wonder. 

4.  This,  alone,  were  there  not  much  be- 
sides, would  prove  his  originality.  His 
vocabulary  was  not  altogether  new. 
"Such  terms  as  Redemption,  Baptism, 
Grace,  Faith,  Salvation,  Regeneration, 
Son  of  Man,  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  were 
household  words  of  Talmudical  Juda- 
ism." l  "Eternal  Life"  (^  duSwos), 
Jesus'  name  for  the  "summum  bonum," 
was  current  also  in  Jewish  teaching. 
Truly  it  would  be  strange  if  Jesus  had 
not  used  something  of  the  terminology  of 
his  age.  Originality  is  not  a  question  of 


i  Emmanuel  Deutsch,  The  Talmud. 

[140] 


THE  SAYEU 

words  but  of  context:  it  is  not  whence 
they  came,  nor  what  they  are,  but  where 
they  stand  and  what  they  do.  These  old 
terms,  woven  into  the  web  of  his  speech, 
become  like  threads  newly  spun,  and  parts 
of  new  patterns;  just  as  old  ideas,  pass- 
ing through  his  crystallizing  imagination 
and  vitalizing  personality,  were  born 
again,  this  time  to  larger  life. 

And  many  current  expressions  he 
adapted  to  new  uses.  In  current  Rabbin- 
ical speech  a  Rabbi,  distinguished  for 
skill  in  the  law  or  excellence  of  character, 
was  called  an  "uprooter  of  mountains;" 
Jesus  applied  the  figure  to  faith.  "Yoke" 
was  current  to  express  the  relation  of  a 
disciple  to  his  master;  the  Rabbis  said 
"the  yoke  of  the  law;"  Jesus  used  the 
figure  while  drawing  men  away  from  their 
influence.  "In  Rabbinical  theology,"  re- 
marks Bruce  in  the  Expositor's  Bible, 
"leaven  was  used  as  an  emblem  of  evil 
desire:  Jesus  had  the  courage  to  use  it 
as  an  emblem  of  the  best  thing  in  the 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

world,  the  Kingdom  of  God  coming  into 
the  heart  of  the  individual  knd  the  com- 
munity." That  he  spiritualized  tlie  mean- 
ing of  the  phrase  "Kingdom  of  God,"  we 
all  know  now;  and  the  failure  of  his  con- 
temporaries to  understand  the  new  mean- 
ing is  one  reason  why  he  was  done  to 
death,  mocked  as  "the  king  of  the  Jews." 
5.  Reference  has  been  made  to  the  repe- 
titions employed  by  Jesus,  a  formal  device 
of  folk  speech;  in  like  manner  he  some- 
times employs  parallelisms,  the  formal 
device  of  Hebrew  poetry,  which  he  doubt- 
less caught  from  reading  and  from  hear- 
ing read  or  sung  the  ancient  Psalter  of 
Israel.  They  are  scattered  like  little 
lyrics  among  his  fragments: 

"Be  not  anxious  for  your  life,  what  ye  shall  eat; 

Nor  yet  for  your  body,  what  ye  shall  put  on: 
For  the  life  is  more  than  food; 

And  the  body  than  the  raiment." 

Or  again: 

"For  of  thorns  men  do  not  gather  ((ruAAe'youo-t)  figs, 
[142] 


THE  SAYER 

Nor    of   a   bramble    bush    gather    (rpuydkrt)    they 
grapes/' 

where,  it  will  be  noticed,  the  English  fails 
to  bring  out  the  Hebraic  peculiarity — ob- 
viously preserved  in  the  Greek — of  sub- 
stituting a  different  word,  while  repeating 
the  thought,  in  the  second  verse.1  This 
couplet  in  both  thought  and  form  might 
have  found  a  place  in  the  old  collection  of 
gnomic  poetry  of  his  people;  it  reads  like 
one  of  the  Proverbs. 

Sometimes  the  lyric  effect  is  no  less 
strong  where  the  parallelism  is  less  formal : 

"Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 

laden, 

And  I  will  give  you  rest; 
Take  my  yoke  upon  you, 

And  learn  of  me; 
For  I  am  meek  and  lowly  in  heart; 

And  ye  shall  find  rest  for  your  souls; 
For  my  yoke  is  easy, 

And  my  burden  is  light." 


i  Different   Greek  words    (KoifjLWfjLevovs   and 
are  also  unhappily  rendered  by   one  word,  "sleeping," 

[143] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

I  think  this  little  poem  induces  the  same 
elemental  mood  of  unquestioning  trust  as 
Whittier's: 

"I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 

Their  fronded  palms  in  air: 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  his  love  and  care." 

And  one  other  instance: 

"Consider  the  lilies  how  they  growt 
They  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin; 
Yet  I  say  unto  you, 
Even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory 
Was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these. 
But  if  God  doth  so  clothe  the  grass  in  the 

field, 
Which  is  to-day,  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into 

the  oven; 
How  much  more  you,  O  ye  of  little  faith? 

!•!  I*.  • 

Fear  not,  little  flock; 

For  it  is  your  Father's  good  pleasure 

To  give  you  the  Kingdom     .     V    , 


"sleep  ye"  in  Luke  XXII,  45-46,  though  here  there  is 
no  parallelism. 

[144] 


THE  SAYER 

Make  for  yourselves  purses  which  wax  not 

old, 

A  treasure  in  the  heavens  that  f aileth  not, 
Where  no  thief  draweth  near, 
Neither  moth  destroyeth, 
For  where  your  treasure  is, 
There  will  your  heart  be  also." 

There  is  in  such  passages  an  almost 
elegiac  tenderness  by  no  means  unknown 
in  old  Hebrew  poetry.  They  recall  that 
most  perfect  lyric  of  the  Anthology  of  his 
ancestors: 

"The  Lord  is  my  shepherd;  I  shall  not  want. 

He  maketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pastures; 

He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still  waters. 

He  restoreth  my  soul: 

He  guideth*  me  in  the  paths  of  righteousness  for 

his  Name's  sake. 
Yea,   though   I   walk   through   the   valley   of  the 

shadow  of  death, 

I  will  fear  no  evil;  for  thou  art  with  me: 
Thy  rod  and  thy  staff,  they  comfort  me. 
Thou  preparest  a  table  before  me  in  the  presence 

of  mine  enemies: 

[145] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

Thou  hast  anointed  my  head  with  oil;  my  cup  run- 
neth over.  1 

Surely  goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow* me  all  the 
days  of  my  life : 

And  I  will  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  for- 
ever." 

The  Beatitudes  and  the  Lord's  Prayer 
have  long  been  chanted  in  all  cathedrals: 
they  have  the  same  inherent  singing  qual- 
ity as  the  Psalter. 

But  beautiful  as  such  passages  are,  they 
encounter  as  the  work  of  Jesus  two  ob- 
jections: first,  the  English  and  the  Greek 
may  have  their  own  movement  and  over- 
tones, subtle  effects,  not  correspondent  to 
anything  in  the  lost  Aramaic  of  Jesus; 
secondly,  the  longer  of  them  may  some- 
times be  centos,1  like  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  brought  together  from  sayings  of 
Jesus  not  originally  uttered  as  wholes. 
Yet  at  all  events  they  remind  us  that 
there  must  have  been  at  times  a  lyrical 


i  They  have  not,  like  the  Parables,  so  exact  a  unity  as 
to  make  this  internally  impossible. 

[146] 


THE  SAYER 

note  of  much  loveliness  in  the  Master's 
voice. 

6.  But  were  a  poet-critic  permitted  to 
name  but  one  quality  of  the  speech  of  the 
Poet  of  Galilee,  that  would  be,  I  think, 
its  expression  of  universal  and  spiritual 
principles  in  particular  and  concrete 
terms.  "Jesus,"  says  Renan,  the  one 
biographer  of  Jesus  who  could  have  best 
developed  the  theme  of  this  book,  "is  at 
once  very  idealistic  in  his  conceptions  and 
very  materialistic  in  his  expressions." 
Ever  is  he  thinking,  dreaming,  beholding 
the  invisible  and  intangible  life  of  the 
spirit,  a  world  out  of  time  and  space;  but 
ever  does  he  speak  of  it,  as  was  observed 
in  the  preceding  chapter  on  the  parables, 
in  figures  drawn  from  this  world  of  rock 
and  stream,  with  its  sunbright  houses  and 
vineyards.  He  almost  never  pronounces 
maxim  or  idea  in  abstract  literality:  the 
Golden  Rule  is  a  rare  exception.  Thus  he 
becomes  a  stumbling-block  to  literal 
minds;  and  creeds  over  which  armies  have 
[147] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

fought,  and  cults  which  have  sapped  the 
life-blood  out  of  men,  have  been  evolved 
from  his  figures:  the  coining  of  a  great 
poet  is  sometimes  fraught  with  peril. 


[148] 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 

BUT  Jesus  was  not  only  the  Seer  and 
the  Sayer,  but  the  Doer,  who  lived 
independently,  picturesquely,  help- 
fully, bravely,  and  died  grandly;  and  a 
personality  so  extraordinary  in  thought, 
speech,  and  act  leaves  no  ordinary  impres- 
sion behind  it.  It  becomes  a  hero  in  the 
memories  of  generations;  in  any  age  for 
good  or  ill  the  theme  of  poetry — one  with 
the  sun  and  the  stars  that  fire  the  imagina- 
tions of  men;  in  a  credulous  age  of  oral 
traditions  and  story-telling,  the  center 
around  which  develop  innumerable  leg- 
ends. So  in  the  mediaeval  Teutonic 
world,  Theodoric  became  the  Dietrich  of 
Bern  in  Middle  High  German;  Carolus 
the  Charlemagne,  and  the  British  king  the 
Arthur  of  Old  French  and  Middle  Eng- 
lish romance ;  so  in  ancient  India  Gautama 
[151] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

became  the  Buddha  of  the  stories  lately 
retold  by  Edwin  Arnold.  And  so  it  is 
that  much  about  Jesus  belongs  to  the 
poetic  folk-lore  of  the  race;  and  it  seems 
fit,  in  concluding  this  essay  on  the  Poet 
of  Galilee,  to  make  some  mention  of  the 
poetry  to  which  he  gave  rise. 

I  shall  omit  reference  to  those  religious 
ideas,  so  widespread  just  before  the  begin- 
ning of  our  era,  which  are  reflected  in  such 
documents  as  the  book  of  Enoch  and  the 
Psalms  of  Solomon,  and  in  the  Messianic 
interpretations  of  the  Old  Testament 
prophecies,  disregarding  as  well  the  beliefs 
peculiar  to  the  Apostolic  church,  like  those 
in  the  power  over  scorpions  and  in  the  gift 
of  tongues ;  for,  although  they  all  helped 
to  create  and  shape  the  biographical  ma- 
terial of  the  Gospels,  they  do  not  concern 
the  unconscious  and  loving  activity  of 
the  popular  imagination  out  of  which,  in 
the  main,  the  Synoptic  legends  must  have 
grown. 

These  legends  tell  chiefly  of  marvels 
[152] 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 

that  happened  to  Jesus,  or  to  those  asso- 
ciated with  him,  and  marvels  that  he  him- 
self accomplished.  They  employ  the 
machinery  of  the  divine  intervention  of 
dreams,  supernatural  visits,  heavenly 
voices,  and  signs,  so  familiar  in  the  legends 
about  other  great  men.  The  miraculous 
birth  of  Jesus  recalls  Gautama's  or  Zo- 
roaster's; Pythagoras  was  supposed  to  be 
the  son  of  Apollo,  Apollonius  of  Tyana 
of  Zeus,  Simon  Magus  of  the  Most  High 
and  a  virgin;  and  it  was  rumored  during 
Plato's  own  lifetime  at  Athens  that  he  was 
the  son  of  Apollo,  a  rumor  which  his 
nephew  Speucippus  took  seriously  enough 
to  deny  at  Plato's  funeral;  and  on  the 
temple  of  Luxor,  Egyptologists  tell  us, 
may  still  be  read  of  the  birth  of  Amon- 
hotep  III  (18th  dynasty)  from  a  virgin 
mother,  though  in  this  instance  the  state- 
ment is  not  a  legend  but  a  royal  boast.1 


*Cf.  "Most  heroes  of  ancient  romance  were  born  as 
the  fruit  of  a  love  attachment  in  which  at  least  one  of 
the  parties  was  originally  represented  as  of  divine  origin." 

[153] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

They  relate  portentous  cures  and  other 
mighty  works  of  their  hero,  not  without 
parallels  in  the  legends  of  other  heroes  of 
the  human  race.  From  Empedocles  to 
Xavier  men  have  raised  the  dead.  The 
chronicles  of  the  saints  down  to  the  present 
day  describe  circumstantially  their  won- 
der-working powers. 

But  the  legends  about  Jesus  are  pecu- 
liarly a  factor  of  poetic  charm  in  an  an- 
cient narrative;  for,  though  the  miracu- 
lous in  the  Gospels  be  not  true  as  history, 
it  is  usually  true  as  beauty,  and  may  serve 
the  truth  of  history  as  its  witness  and  as 
its  symbol. 

The  miraculous  in  the  Gospels  serves 
as  the  witness  to  the  preeminence  of 
Jesus,  in  that  it  could  never  have  grown 
up  around  a  base  or  an  inferior  man. 
There  is  no  smoke  without  some  fire.  The 
roots  of  praise  grow  only  in  a  fertile  soil. 
The  imagination  has  never  exalted  the 


Schofield,  English  Literature  from  the  Conquest  to  Chau- 
cer, 1906,  p.  189. 

[154] 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 

renegadoes  to  the  high  priests,  nor  the 
cut-throats  to  the  saviors.  Its  glowing 
creations  must  be  kindled  by  living  coals. 
Thus  the  legends  about  Jesus  are  welcome. 

The  miraculous  in  the  Gospels  serves  as 
a  symbol  of  the  life  and  thought  of  Jesus, 
in  that  it  powerfully  interprets  and  en- 
forces their  meaning.  It  is  a  translation 
of  a  difficult  spiritual  into  a  simple  ma- 
terial language.  It  is,  in  each  case,  to 
borrow  Carpenter's  words,  "the  pictorial 
utterance  of  an  idea."  1  It  is  an  uncon- 
scious poetic  product  of  the  folk-mind, 
analogous  to  that  translation  of  his  spirit- 
ual ideas  into  material  symbols,  con- 
sciously made  by  Jesus. 

Thus  the  myths  of  the  immaculate  con- 
ception, the  star  in  the  east,  the  voices  of 
angels  and  the  descending  dove,  the 
temptation,  the  transfiguration,  the  rend- 
ing of  the  temple  veil,2  the  darkness  and 


ij.   Estlin   Carpenter,   The  Bible  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.    Chap.  IV. 
2  The  rending  of  the  veil  before  the  Holy  of  Holies  is 

[155} 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

the  earthquake,  and  the  resurrection,  have 
meanings,  which  I  will  not  be  rhde  enough 
to  expound.  In  the  leaping  of  the  babe 
in  Elizabeth's  womb  there  is  the  same 
naive  symbolism  in  a  quaint  and  homely 
form,  and  quite  clear  in  origin  and  mean- 
ing— obviously  a  reflection  of  the  historic 
relations  between  John  and  one  whom  he 
recognized  as  greater. 

The  miracles  ascribed  to  Jesus  have  the 
same  significance.  It  is  quite  likely  that 
his  gentle  and  commanding  personality 
quieted  the  epileptic  and  the  mentally  de- 
ranged, who  in  those  cruelly  ignorant 
times  roamed  at  large  in  such  numbers; 
and  it  is  quite  likely  that  this  contributed 
to  the  legends  of  his  cures;  as  many  an- 
other miracle  might  be  traced  by  critics  to 
some  basis  in  an  occurrence  imperfectly 
remembered  (for  instance,  the  story  of  the 
shekel  in  the  fish's  mouth  hints  that  Peter 


developed  in  the  Hebrew  Gospel  into  the  fracture  of  the 
lintel:  "Superliminare  templi  infinitae  magnitudinis  frac- 
tum  esse  atque  divisum." 

[156] 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 

eked  out  the  small  purse  of  the  disciples 
by  occasionally  plying  his  trade),  or  to 
some  basis  in  a  parable  or  figurative  say- 
ing not  understood  (as,  for  instance,  the 
twice  reported  miracle  of  the  feeding  of 
the  multitudes).  But  whatever  their 
source,  as  finally  wrought  out  these 
legends  symbolize  the  love  and  the  faith 
that  dominated  a  man  who  went  about 
doing  good  and  preaching  the  power  of 
God.  Truly  did  Jesus  make  the  lame  to 
walk  and  the  blind  to  see ;  and  he  did  feed 
the  multitudes,  and  cast  out  devils,  and 
those  who  had  his  faith  in  his  truth  were 
made  whole.  And  to  those  who  were  with 
him  his  assuring  voice  may  well  have 
calmed  the  tempest  and  the  waters.  So 
legend  has  dealt  with  Gautama  and  with 
Francis  of  Assisi. 

Though  in  the  so-called  Apocrypha  are 
a  few  stories  of  the  same  beautiful  sym- 
bolism— some  in  a  vein  of  the  miraculous, 
like  that  of  the  clay  birds  made  to  live  as 
the  child  Jesus  claps  his  hands  and  shouts, 
[157] 


THE  POET  OF  GALILEE 

"Go,  fly  away,  and  while  ye  live  remember 
me;"  and  others  surprising  Jus  by  their 
simple  realism,  like  that  of  Jesus  crowned 
with  flowers  by  his  playmates — yet  as  a 
whole  they  but  bring  into  relief  the  superi- 
ority of  the  Synoptic  legends.  Like  the 
story  in  John  of  the  turning  of  the  water 
into  wine,  they  reduce  Jesus  to  the  level 
of  the  mediaeval  wizard,  delighting,  like 
Mephistopheles,  who  drew  wine  from  au- 
gur holes,  in  astonishing  by  grotesque  sur- 
prises. Such  tales  are  the  offspring  of 
a  degraded  ideal  of  Jesus,  as  one  arro- 
gantly and  aimlessly  powerful,  and  thus 
totally  lack  the  lovely  symbolic  propriety 
of  those  in  the  Synoptics.  And  they 
bear  no  witness  to  the  man  we  have  there 
become  acquainted  with. 

If  some  great  poet,  after  studying  the 
historic  figure  of  Jesus,  had  devised  an 
epic  to  celebrate  him  with  the  conscious 
inventions  of  symbolic  beauty,  he  could 
never  have  rivaled  the  unconscious  crea- 
tions of  the  poet  folk-soul  of  Palestine. 
[158] 


A  HERO  OF  FOLK-LORE 

Slowly  and  surely,  with  unerring  imagina- 
tion of  personal  affection,  it  gave  birth 
and  being  to  those  legends  which  the  un- 
known authors  of  our  Gospels  none  too 
soon  gathered  up  into  the  story  of  one  of 
the  most  majestic  of  all  the  masters  and 
deliverers  of  life  that  ever  came  forth  "out 
of  the  bosom  of  humanity."  * 


i  As  a  pendant  to  the  foregoing  chapter,  the  following 
disconnected  observations  may  be  permitted. 

1.  Many  details  of  the  legends  illustrate  this  symbolic 
propriety,  as  the  casting  the  devils  into  swine  and  the 
grotesque  stampede  into  the  lake. 

2.  The  legend  of  the  Walk  to  Emmaus  bears  peculiarly 
the   folk  character,  in   distinction   to  traditions   of   an 
ecclesiastical  or  doctrinal  origin.    Its  motif  is  a  common 
one  in  old  balladry  and  popular  tale,  and  it  is  worked 
out  by  the  author  of  Luke  with  an  artless  skill  beyond 
all  praise. 

3.  The  myth  of  the  resurrection  is  not  only  a  symbol 
of  the  spirit  and  influence  of  Jesus  as  still  unsubdued, 
but  an  outgrowth  of  humanity's  craving  for  a  sequel, 
when  Death  has  written  at  the  end  of  the  story  its 
blunt  FINIS. 


[159] 


THE    LAST    BOOKS    BY    THE    LATE 
OTTO   PFLEIDERER,  D.  D. 

Professor  in  the  University  of  Berlin 

CHRISTIAN  ORIGINS 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
CHRISTIANITY 


RELIGION  AND 
HISTORIC  FAITHS 


TRANSLATED    BY 

DANIEL  A.  HUEBSCH,  PH.  D. 
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MORAL    EDUCATION 

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A  discussion  of  the  whole  problem  of  moral  educa- 
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"It  is  easily  the  best  book  of  its  kind  yet  written  in 
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